You Made My Daughter Ill

For anyone who hasn’t followed us over on Instagram or Facebook allow me to bring you up to speed. From March through to October, my daughter is one of the happiest and healthiest kids alive. Barely a sniffle and nothing will hold her back from getting outside and having a good time. However, the minute that cold-weather sets in then the pair of us are doomed. She is currently marked as being chronically ill as she is waiting for surgery to remove both tonsils and adenoids which are way oversized and cause copious amounts of infection, tonsillitis and a worrying level of sleep apnoea. I do what I can to avoid putting her in situations where she is going to pick up extra germs but she’s a child so it’s pretty unavoidable…but not impossible. So when I find out that somewhere that should be a relatively safe space for my child DOESN’T exercise caution, it makes me a little…ranty.

I was tempted to take this over and create a Mumsnet style AIBU post but then thought I’d come on here and rant as I normally do – at least I have some control over the trolls and haters here. Now, please tell me if you think I am unnecessarily cross about this but to me this isn’t on!

Picked Alyssa up from nursery 2 weeks ago now and was told she wasn’t herself and she’d been playing with her ear a lot – some of the staff, particularly the pre-school leader are really good at keeping an eye out and letting me know of the tell tale signs she is going to be ill. Sure enough the following day we were visiting the doctors and the doctor confirmed she had an ear infection and sent us on the way with antibiotics. I’d like to say that the doctor did nothing other than look in her ear, didn’t even check her temperature, but that is for a whole other post about how ridiculous our surgery actually is.

She got worse and worse over the afternoon and that night and the following morning I took her back to the surgery, demanding a different doctor who would listen to me and the other symptoms. Second doctor confirmed she had a raging case of tonsillitis as I had thought as well as the Hand, Foot and Mouth virus on top of it. We went away with the same medicine and were told to use paracetamol and nurofen to manage the pain.

To say the next 6 days were hard would be an under statement. To have your child lying next to you crying in both pain and hunger is one of the worst things I have ever experienced. The inside of her mouth looked like a cave with stalactite ulcers hanging from every part, as well as her face, bum, hands and bits covered in weeping sores too. The antibiotics had calmed down the tonsillitis but they could do very little for the virus that was wreaking havoc through her little body. For those seeking help and advice on how to manage Hand Foot and Mouth in young children, go to a pharmacy and get the mouth spray Difflam which will help to ease the pain. Then it’s fluids through a straw until the ulcers have gone – there is nothing more you can do.

Once she had healed and felt better enough, I called her nursery to check that she would be okay to return (having rung them previously to inform them of her condition so that they could warn other parents to be on the look out) and was told that of course she could return… they didn’t exclude children with Hand Foot and Mouth. I’m sorry, what?! I was told they don’t exclude children with this particular virus, despite the fact it is highly contagious, because some children don’t get it that badly. Uhhhh, I think the clue is in the SOME part?! Surely, if there is any risk of a bad case, children should be excluded?!

I had been wondering where on earth Alyssa had caught the virus and now I knew that it was likely it was from Nursery. I get kids share germs and spread them like Jam ( I’m an ex-teacher so I really do understand) but surely we should be excluding a really contagious virus which has a possibility of being really bad?! Alyssa was SO ill with this and two weeks on still has the healing skin to prove it. Am I being unreasonable? Would you not expect something like this to mean exclusion from nursery until non-contagious which is when the sores and ulcers have burst and scabbed over? I am in disbelief, angry and a little bit narked. What do you think?