War of the Rash

 October 3, 2020

If you were to look up Roseola, you would see that it is a nasty rash that covers the body and is common amongst the youngest littles in our lives.  Usually.  But then there is Bradley.

He went to school one morning, tired as usual...common for him.  Bradley is allergic to sleep and avoids it all costs.  As such, he was getting a hefty dose of Attarax every night to help him go and stay asleep.  On top of that he gets another small dose of a drug that helps as well.  Together...they were just helping him get a few hours of sleep each night and then trying to help him not be so wide awake when he did wake up that we wold be spending hours with him waiting for him to fall back to sleep only to wake him up for school.  It is a vicious cycle!  

Anyway, while he was at school, he requested a nap on his IPad.  And they always let him.  First, if Bradley wants to sleep - you will not keep him awake and the ensuing fight can get ugly.  And two, face it, one less kiddo to work with at a time.  So he took a nap and when he woke up he had a temperature in the 100’s.  So mom was called and I brought him home.  At home, I changed him out, noted one tiny spot on his stomach and then Bradley ended up napping again for a good hour.  When he got up from that, I noticed a couple more spots, about as many as I could hold in two hands.  

The doctor’s office was full so I set him up to be seen the next day and just kept him cooled off with Tylenol and Motrin alternating.  By the next morning, his torso and his back were covered in angry red spots and the arms and legs were starting to be covered.  That was nothing to what was to come.  Bradley’s Doctor told us he had Roseola and we started these four hour medicine cycles to try to help him get through the next week.  

We thought that we would be able to give Benadryl during the day and Attarax at night and that should make him kind of sleepy all the time and a little less miserable throughout the whole ordeal.  Wrong.  

Turns out, Benadryl really doesn’t make him sleepy.  The anticipated three day fever lasted a week.  And Attarax which is given to people for allergy itching...wasn’t enough to get him through the night.  So we just had to nurse him through the days on Benadryl, give him all his usual meds with the addition of Benadryl at night, keep the anti-fever meds on board at even intervals and lay beside him through the night to keep him from scratching himself raw and bloody.  

It was quite a long week for all of us.  And in terms of exhaustion levels...quite the extended recovery attempt.  We would barely get Bradley back to school before the Fall Break and Thanksgiving.  Ours was a quiet Family affair, and my usual hustle and bustle to prep was quite a bit smaller than it would normally be.  But, when we sat at the Thanksgiving table, Bradley was healthy enough to sit beside me and eat like a big boy.  No high chair or improvised booster seat.  Just a little boy, in a chair at a table eating dinner between his mom and dad.  When you consider the true meaning of Thanksgiving, I guess we might have an advantage there.  We are always quietly thankful for each day, a gentle reminder of what could have been but isn’t every time we take care of his button site and the certainty that it could have been worse.  Even with the rash from Hell...it could have been worse.  Bradley managed to fight off what we were told was Roseola, what we acknowledge now could have been something else.  But his little body and his impaired immune system was strong enough to push through and then push out whatever it was that was attacking him, and we didn’t need a hospital stay to get through it.  That alone is quite an achievement in and of itself.  

He doesn’t take Attarax anymore.  We have actually moved on to a new med that helps with sleep, but it’s true assistance is probably in the gentle mood enhancing and impulse/anxiety suppressing that comes with it.  An anti-seizure medication that failed that job in patients but helped with sleep, anxiety and impulse control.  Given our current state of Isolation during this Pandemic, it was a timely and beneficial change.  Too bad he doesn’t sleep any better than before...but Attarax was creating anxiety in him, so he is much better off.  

We aren’t completely sure he had Roseola, we aren’t completely sure he didn’t.  We know it was something like Roseola with a lot of characteristics that weren’t Roseola like.  So as usual, we maintained that life with Bradley is all about mystery and trying to fit the pieces of a complicated puzzle together.  But that is what we expect with him and how we approach everything with him.  How do we puzzle out this new piece of Bradley’s world?  

But that’s the Challenge of Bradley after all, and every day is a new day with a new set of challenges.  Wouldn’t want life to get boring after all.  :-).