Scarlet Fever

August 11, 2007

Little Man has been a very healthy child. I'm not sure he's had more than one cold. Other than that, he's only had one ear infection and that was when he was 15 months old and had a reaction to the amoxicillian that he was given. I suppose one can't go on being so healthy forever.

Little Man is a 'rashy' kid. He's got extremely sensitive skin and we don't react much to rashes because they are typically superficial in nature. Unfortunately that was NOT the case yesterday morning when I went to change him out of his jammies. I just gasped as I pulled his shirt off. He was covered from head to thigh with a bumpy red rash. Yes, the 'sandpapery' kind.

We took him to the doctor yesterday afternoon and she diagnosed it as Scarlet Fever. Interestingly enough he doesn't have strep throat and he never did run a high fever.

For those of you that don't know, Scarlet Fever is strep with a rash. I don't know of a simpler way to put it. Of course with any strep, if left untreated can lead to worse things (i.e. rheumatic fever) but 10 days of antibiotics and we should be good.

Several people are thinking it's a bigger deal than it is with the thoughts that it's some sort of "old time" eradicated disease. So here's a quick history lesson straight from Wikipedia regarding this thought: Many novels depicting life before the nineteenth century describe scarlet fever as an acute disease being followed by many months spent in convalescense. The convalescence was probably due to complications with rheumatic fever. Prior to an understanding of how streptococcus was spread, it was also not uncommon to destroy or burn the personal effects of a person afflicted with scarlet fever to prevent transmission to other people.

So now that people understand how and what strep is and we have antibiotics, it's not such a big deal.