A Visit to the Doctor

Well, Friday, July 5 my fever stayed down!  What a relief.  However, as the day went on, my sore throat got worse and worse.  When I went to bed that night, I told myself that if it wasn't better by morning, I would go into the doctor to get a Strep test.  Again, I was so worried.  Normally, when I get sick--which I tend to a lot working with kids for 9 months of the year--it's really no big deal.  I sniffle, sneeze, and cough and get over it with time.  However, now being pregnant, it's a whole new world--yes, I'm sick, but is it hurting my baby?  This morning, I woke up early and decided to go to the clinic--assuming I had Step Throat. I still had a house full of 4th of July guests, but I left and went into Fergus knowing that if I had something, I had to get checked out to make sure my baby was ok and to figure out what medications (if any) I could take to feel better.  I went to the Fergus Walk-In clinic.  I got in right away, which was a nice surprise.  The nurse gave me the God-awful strep test and then the doctor came in.  I told her the symptoms and she looked in my throat.  As soon as she did that, she seemed to know what was wrong with me.  The Strep Test came back negative--instead, I had a virus.  The doctor said she saw sores in my throat which indicated a virus called "Hand, Foot, and Mouth Disease".  My initial reaction:  what the heck is that?  She explained that it is a virus that mostly effects kids ages 2-5.  Well, I'm certainly not 2-5 years old, but I was around Madalyn who was sick on vacation.  The symptoms of this virus sounded a lot like what she had on vacation, so I assumed that Madalyn shared it with Auntie.  Next the poor doctor was bombarded with questions from paranoid-mom-to-be:  IS THIS GOING TO HURT MY BABY? She assured me that this was not going to hurt my baby at all.  She also said that there weren't antibiotics to cure it--it would just go away on it's own in about a week.  She also told me I could take Tylenol to relieve the throat pain.  Although I didn't have many sores on my hands or feet, she said I could expect to see these come about soon.   Before leaving, I asked her probably about a dozen more times to reassure me that this weird virus wasn't going to hurt my baby and that Tylenol wouldn't hurt my baby.  She was probably annoyed with me, but oh, well!