Strep Strep everywhere... except in our throats

So, what have we been doing since Christmas? Dealing with crazy things like this!

 

Zeke had a hangnail or something for a while and his finger turned a little red where it was. He showed it to me once, or it caught my eye but I kind of forgot about it and he didn't ever complain about it. Until one Sunday night. He started telling me that his finger was hurting. I looked at it and it had turned red all the way around the fingernail. I told him that we would go get some epsom salt in the morning and start soaking it. Then he went to bed and was up every 30 minutes to hour complaining about his finger. I put a bandaid on it told him to go to sleep. At 11pm when he was still crying I took the bandaid off thinking maybe I put it on too tight and noticed that the finger was even more swollen. Well, we made it through the night, barely, and looked at his finger the next morning. It was huge! Poor kid. The picture doesn't even do it justice. That is a huge blister on the side and it was swollen everywhere it shows red. I took him to the doctor and the blister popped and he took a sample of the puss. They put him on antibiotics and called me later in the week to tell me that he had strep. I didn't know that you could have strep other than a strep throat.

And then there is Porter. Porter has not been himself since Christmas. At least that's when I noticed it. He ran a fever for a few days when we got home and still is acting weird. He lays around and tells me he is too tired to do anything. Sometimes he acts like it is too much work to even get in his chair at the table to eat. He's taken to laying across my lap during meals and only getting up to take a bite... which he wants me to feed to him.

I've tried to get him more active hoping that will get the energy pumping, but when I take the boys to the church gym to play, he spends most of his time following me around wanting me to hold him or laying on the floor. He also had a sore bottom for a while that I tried treating with cream, but it didn't go away. Then I got really worried when there was blood in his stools. I took him to the doctor and they found that he also had a strep infection and that was what was causing the problems with his bottom. He went on antibiotics and all that cleared up (only finally when we made it through the whole round of antibiotics) but he still hasn't had any of his energy return. The doctor had me take him to get some blood work done, but it all came back normal.

Now he is sick. He has a nasty cough and a runny nose. So does Zeke actually. I'm hoping that this is a crazy weird year for my kids and we are just going from sickness to sickness and there really isn't anything to worry about. Otherwise somebody better figure out why my Porter man is so stinkin tired all the time!