Itch itch!

“Eeeek!” Rachel screamed.  “What is this?”  she asked curiously, pointing to the many red dots spread across Kayleen’s back.  Yen and I took a closer look.  Yes, what was it?  Was it some kind of illness she picked up from her week at the play-school?

The dots were like rashes.  I checked her rashes against some pictures I found on the Internet when I searched for ‘childhood skin conditions’.  HFMD?  No.  Chicken pox?  Definitely not.  A match with a few more pictures proved a failed attempt.  And thankfully too.  So what was it really?  I told Yen that we would bring her to the doctor’s if her condition worsened the next day.

I forgot that it was the holidays - Hari Raya Haji.  Polyclinics close on that day!  Fortunately there are two clinics in the neighbouring Pioneer Mall.  We found that her condition had not improved the evening of the holiday – the rashes have spread to the front of the body, her neck and also her calves.  Though I would still consider them mild, we decided to bring her to the opened clinic for a visit.

The rashes do not see too obvious in the pictures, no thanks to the bright lights the pictures were taken under.  But if you do notice the red spots, redden them by five to ten times in your imagination and you'd get a better idea of what we had seen..

The wait was not too long as we had made a telephone call to the clinic to get a queue number prior to our visit.  The doctor who saw Kayleen decided straightaway that it was not the dreaded HFMD, nor was it chicken pox or anything very serious.  He did not attempt to guess what it was; merely said it was some allergy.  He issued our younger princess with two days’ medical leave and some medication.

Kayleen still seemed a little restless.  Other than that, she is fine today.  She is not scratching on the rashes as much today.  We have not used any other the medication the doctor had prescribed for our princess, thanks to advice from Yen (Mommy knows best!).  The episode raised another mini-alarm in our household – just another day in the life of a parent with three young children, I guess…