Strep and Staph

Okay, so this week at my house has been a doozy. Since we moved here to Chicago I can't recall a length of time longer than two weeks where everyone in our little family was healthy at once. I feel like I am the very luckiest of us all though, because I ALWAYS manage to catch whatever is brought into the house either through Nate or Robert. Last Thursday, Nate woke up from his nap with a temperature of 102. I was a bit nervous but not ready to go to the ER. I gave him some fever reducer and he perked right up and was back to normal within an hour. The following Sunday I was sitting in Primary and all of a sudden did not feel well. I tried to shake it off all day by keeping myself busy. The following morning I had a sore throat but nothing I couldn't handle. While this was happening with me Nate continued to wake up everyday from his nap with that really high temperature and I kept giving him the fever reducer because once he got some of that he was his awesome self again. Well, Monday night my throat got so bad that I couldn't sleep. I was up the whole night talking myself out of the inevitable. I would not admit that I had strep throat again. I get it every year! I don't know why. By the time morning came around I had spent the night next to my toilet and my tonsils were so swollen they were touching each other in the back of my throat and they looked like they were bleeding. What made things scary, though, was that involuntarily my throat would clench up and seize shut so I couldn't breath. Needless to say, Robert packed me up into the car and took me to the ER because no doctors could see me until the next day. Meanwhile, Robert and I started to notice Nate getting these tiny pimple looking things on his chin. Within hours of first noticing them they have enlarged to the size of a pencil eraser and opened up into these nasty looking sores. I didn't know what to do about it and frankly didn't have the energy to figure it out. I was lucky if I had the energy to swallow the pills that had been prescribed to me. By Wednesday, I had my antibiotics, Nate had at least three of these vicious sores on his chin, and Robert was everything from full-time student to super-mom. He has been my hero this week. Anyway, after recovering for a couple of days I had enough in me to get back to being mom. On Friday, Nate wakes up with more of these sores on his face and they are spreading to his nose. Okay, now I'm nervous. It's been over a week and he is still waking up with his "nap-time temp" and these sores aren't going away and they are spreading. We took him in to the doctor and three hours later find out that he has a staph infection of the skin. We have to apply a cream to it three times a day and keep him from touching it because it will spread to wherever he touches next. Has anyone ever tried to put a cream on a two-year-old's face and keep him from touching it? I think it's an impossible task. So there it is. The best week ever. I guess the best things I can say about this week is that I have an awesome husband who really knows how to step up and help me out, and I know what this infection looks like so that if it ever shows up again we can get at it before it gets really bad. Oh, and, I will ALWAYS get strep throat.