Bunny Pox

Remember that one time that even though Luke is always healthy, in spite of the petri dish that must be a kindergarten classroom, he got super sick on Christmas Eve (resulting in the worst Christmas break EVER)? Since then, he's been remarkably healthy. He had one tummy ache and a random throw up, but managed to survive the stomach flu that knocked the rest of our house down. In fact, he has perfect attendance and at this point, with two months of school left, I thought that perfect attendance award was in the bag.

Friday, we were all off school. We stuck around the house and cleaned to get ready for Easter, which we host every year. Friday night, we went to the park and then Dairy Queen. It was finally warm enough to be outside without coats, although we were a little chilly. In short, all was right with the world.

See? Tell me that isn't the most right with the world picture you've ever seen.

Friday night when I was tucking Luke into bed, I noticed two little bumps on his shoulder. I brushed it off as bug bites because we were outside playing a lot, he was out in the woods with my parents a lot that week, as they watched him since he was on spring break. And hey, what else could it be? Until the next morning when he woke up and the two bumps had spread from one shoulder, across his chest, to the other shoulder. And they were itchy. In my heart, I knew what it was, but I told Luke that we needed to go get it checked out because if he was contagious, we couldn't see his cousins and hunt Easter eggs with them that day as planned. His youngest cousin is only 8 months old, so I knew we couldn't risk passing anything on.

So instead of spending a beautiful Saturday outside, we spent 2.5 hours at Urgent Care. Yes, the wait was that long.

The whole time, Luke kept saying, "We should've been hunting Easter eggs an hour ago!" Multiplied by however much time had passed. And I kept thinking, "Why does this place sound like a TB ward? I wonder what other diseases we're picking up?!"

Finally, it was our turn. After reiterating that we hadn't used any new laundry detergents or tried any new food, I also reiterated that I normally wouldn't come in for itchy red bumps, but we were seeing family and I didn't want to pass anything along. The doctor looked at him, left and came back with a dermatology textbook and flipped right to the chicken pox section. Which I already knew, but I really, really wanted her to say, "These are mosquito bites. Are you stupid?" She said they don't really see chicken pox much anymore, so they have to look it up to remind themselves of what the first stage even looks like, but it was textbook perfect. At that point, Luke's face crumpled and he said, "So you mean we can't see anyone this weekend?" and he broke down in a way that I've never seen him break down, like huge sobs. Thanks for nothing, chicken pox. You're a huge jerk. The doctor tried to console him, I tried to console him, but he was just sobbing. She showed me a few other things that it could be, but it was pretty obvious from the pictures that it wasn't any of that and that it was chicken pox.

I carried him into the bathroom, washed his face and got him to stop crying with the promise of a Happy Meal, but he was one seriously sad kid. He'd been looking forward to hunting Easter eggs with his cousins and having them over to our house Sunday all week, so this was a tough blow for a six year old.

Fortunately, my parents opted to still come over to Easter dinner the next day, so Luke didn't feel like a total leper. It wasn't the Easter we had planned and not all of his pox have scabbed over yet, so as of today, his perfect attendance is null and void. I just can't believe we avoided the multiple rounds of strep throat and stomach flu that swept through his classroom only to get hit with chicken pox, of all things. Just like I wanted to return our Christmas plague from Santa, I would like to return this pox from the Easter Bunny.