So, I’m a terrible mom…sort of.
About a week ago, Ashlyn got a little rash on her neck. After asking if that’s the only spot on her body that’s broken out like that, I’m thinking it’s a mild case of hives. I give her some benedryl and some cream to put on it. No biggie. It’s going through what I think it a healing phase, still no biggie. “It itches Mom”, she says to me. I hand her more cream, “Just put this on it.”
She goes off on Sunday with the rest of the golf team to the State Championships, which her team won. Good for them!
So she’s at school yesterday, and the school nurse calls me. “I think she has Shingles. You might want to take her to the Dr.” I had planned on taking her to one of those walkin clinics that evening, but apparently the pain got unbearable at school. Sure enough, it is Shingles. It hadn’t even crossed my mind that was a possibility since it’s caused by the same virus that causes Chicken Pox and she had those when she was 4. I thought she was immune.
So, I’m a terrible mom, for letting that go, but it looked just like the hives I get. ::sigh::
October 25th, 2006 at 11:37 pm
Ammy,
Not a terrible mother at all, shingles are usually surprising to people.
My friend Jeff finally got his father to go to the doctor a couple of years ago because the “Terrible Rash” around his eyes wouldn’t go away.
It was shingles and the physician told him that he would have gone blind if he’d kept putting off the visit.
Most people dismiss the chicken pox because it is such a common childhood disease. There are actually some pretty scary statistics about the illness and anyone who has had it may develop shingles sometime in their life.
I just wish I hadn’t waited till I was 27 to get the dread illness!
But on the good mother side: Most people get shingles later in life. A little piece of the virus hides out at the end of a nerve cluster and comes back to attack people when they are older and weaker.
So, don’t beat yourself up too much. I’m sure Ashlyn will forgive you after a well applied sports car or two (Absolutely Necessary and prescribed by Dr. Brian) and she will probably forget the whole thing in a few decades.
And hey, at least you didn’t leave her in a burning house like one of the UCA professors did to their baby once!
She used to tell the story to all of her classes when she would talk about having trouble bonding with children and life’s most difficult moments.
She was at her mother’s house and the baby her baby was asleep upstairs when the fire started.
They both forgot her son even existed as they rushed around trying to get valuables out of the house.
When the fire department arrived, they found the infant upstairs. The event even made the front page of her hometown newspaper.
The headline was something like this:
MOTHER AND GRANDMOTHER STRUGGLE TO REMOVE PIANO WHILE CHILD IS TRAPPED UPSTAIRS IN THE BURNING HOUSE!!!
She said that she couldn’t go home for years after that happened.
Later,
Brian