A Jeffrey Update

We decided to take Jeffrey to the doctor today, just to make sure he was doing okay and that no secondary infections had popped up.

When I had read up on hand foot and mouth disease, I wondered if that was what Jeffrey really had. When Harrison had it as a toddler, it was uncomfortable for him, but he was nowhere near as miserable as Jeffrey has been this past week.

Well, we found out why...I guess there are a couple of different viruses that can cause sores in the mouth. Hand foot and mouth disease sores usually show up at the back of the throat. All of Jeffrey's sores are on his tongue, gums, cheeks, lip...and ouchy. Yeah. The pediatrician we took him too really felt like that because of what his sores looked like, that instead he had a herpes virus. Yep. Cold sores. Inside his mouth.

This made a ton of sense because of the level of pain we could tell Jeffrey was and has been in since Saturday. I am impressed that he will even take a bottle. Of course the main thing to focus on is keeping him hydrated, and thankfully we've been able to do that.

Hopefully he will start getting better now. Apparently with this type of virus it usually peaks at 4-5 days and then gets better from there, and it's day five today. The bad news...he now has the herpes virus and will get cold sores. The good news...it will never show itself in this way ever again for him! It will just show up as normal colds sores, which in and of themselves are awful, but at least those you can put ointment on. If he was older they do have a mouthwash that they give to kids that get this that has lidocaine in it, to help numb the pain. But they don't give it to toddlers/infants, for obvious reasons.