Oh, how very sad. :(

I was just thinking of actual cooking/prep, but if you want to include clean up - that's fine, too. :)

Cooking in this case would include any meal or snack prep, even if it's not technically cooked. This will vary greatly, I'm sure, especially if you bake your own bread, etc. Just curious. I'd like to cut down on our kitchen hours but not sure it's reasonable.

Oh yes, we don't mind paying extra for that as well. And I prefer to have a service because then they take care of filing taxes for the people who work for them. We make sure to tip well, because the people working for the service are not seeing as much of the income, and I want to be sure that they are well compensated for their work. But licensed, insured, bonded... Very important here as well. :)

Minimum $200 - $250 here. Barebones job, like Catwoman said. (Was it Catwoman?) More detailed cleaning would require higher pay. No walls, cabinets, windows, obviously. Whether this will be a weekly, biweekly or one off job would matter, too, with weekly rates being the lowest. We have a weekly cleaner, and we have a very small home. 3 br, 4 bath, but only 1300 sq feet - we have a townhouse, to avoid yard work. :D We have spent 12 years finding a cleaner that's affordable. Prices range from $145/week down to our current steal at $80/week. $80 per week, again, is a steal, and we tip very well to offset that price. Before finding this one (who was recommended by a friend), prices averaged between $95 - $145. Weekly.

Nice work! Congrats!!!

So glad that he's home, and that you had the ambulance do the transport! Hopefully the nurse will give you tips on how to manage the drain. It will get faster with time and practice. Is your DH or someone else going to learn to do it, too, in case you need a respite?

I have a hard time with car seats. No arthritis, but other hand issues. It's painful, and requires patience from the little one. If at all possible, DH does the car seat duty. Not always possible, but often. :) Maybe I should train DS (10) on this ... he could take over!

We invite the neighbor kid to our parties, if we 're having the party at home. It feels kinder. You and your kiddo have to do what's right for you, but one other option to consider might be changing venues. Could you have the party in another location? So this other friend doesn't have to see that there is a party to which he was not invited?

Just say No! To public school? :) Turned ours in, too. Now we wait for approval, oops I mean confirmation of receipt!

Oh, a relapse. :( I'm so sorry. Ok, I'd heard a few weeks, too. And then I've also read after fever and open blisters or sores are gone, he's good to go - but I wasn't sure. How soon did you let your kiddo out the door, to the park? Or other areas? I don't want to pass this on, but neither do I want to keep him home unnecessarily. I did call the doc after posting - she said the peeling is normal. She seems to think he's not contagious now, too, but again that conflicts with so much I've read!

We've had recent round of HFM in the house. It's been horrific. DS was in terrible shape last week, but he feels fine now and the spots are clearing up. Whew. But the peeling! His fingers look like a shredded mess. Is this normal for HFM? And how long is he contagious? I am finding conflicting info online, and can't tell when he'll be out of our self-imposed quarantine. No fever, feels fine, spots are no longer red, he's just peeling like crazy. Anyone know? And FWIW, I have HFM, too. :( Immunocompromised here, my case has been quite different from DS's, taking longer to resolve. Wondering if I have the peeling to anticipate, too. Ugh.

The standard for kids would be amoxicillin. For adults it's doxycycline, but not in kids. If your child is allergic, there are other options, so don't worry. The main concern is that the dosage is high enough to be bacteriocidal rather than just bacteriostatic. Meaning that a dose that is not quite high enough will stop the spirochetes from replicating, the patient will feel better, but later relapse. You want a dose high enough to *kill* the spirochetes. And you want to take it for the entire life cycle of the spirochete - go for 30 days - to prevent relapse as well. I took so many different antibiotics on the journey through Lyme, there are many, many options. Allergy to penicillins and cephalosporins won't stop her from being adequately treated. Please do get that babesiosis test, too. Treatment for that is not just antibiotics. It requires an antiparasitic, as babesia is a cousin of malaria. It is a miserable, miserable illness, and can be very serious. Night sweats and high fevers are a hallmark of it.

I wouldn't send him back, and I'd probably come up with something fun to do tonight to help with the disappointment. Maybe something to help get all that energy out - some very active, go celebrate your active little boy's energy. :) No experience with VBS here, but from reading your posts, it sounds like the VBS at your church is better run, and a better fit for your kiddo (and probably lots of others). 12 kids to 1 teacher sounds chaotic, whether they are active or not (and kids should be active). Your church's child/teacher ratio sounds much more reasonable.

OP, keep us posted on your DD. I'm glad to see so many people here are Lyme aware! TBDs are nothing to mess around with, and some can kill or leave devastating consequences that will last, well, forever. Wish I didn't know that quite so well. Whether it's Lyme or not, a fever like that for 6 days needs to be investigated further, and I hope you find answers soon. Sparkly, go to that walk in clinic! You want 30 days of antibiotics, to cover the entire life cycle of the spirochete. 10 days won't do it.

Night sweats, high fever. Possible tick exposure. She needs a test for Babesiosis.. Ask for tests for Babesia Microti and Babesia Duncani (or it may be listed as WA-1). Also erlichiosis. Those tests may not be conclusive. But you have to try. Babesia needs different meds, not the usual antibiotics. Also, go in with a list of the places you traveled and some research to back up that there is babs, Lyme, etc in the area. Our local doc thought babs was a tropical disease only and was shocked to hear how common it is where we live. She now routinely tests and finds cases. There are other TBDs to be concerned about, but the behavior you listed made me think immediately of babs and erlichiosis.

:grouphug:

I'm in a better place to write a bit now. :) The short term side effects were pretty intense for me. I stuck it out anyway, but it was hard. Let's see if can remember: double vision; nausea and vomiting (this was particularly fun as I was doing field work and would go behind my tent to throw up, lovely); very little pain relief - I still had pain periodically through the month, despite the Lupron; intense mood swings; hair loss; leg pain; muscle pain; fatigue. I had an overall sick feeling the entire time, as well. Now I would call it "toxic" but when I was on Lupron that word wouldn't have occurred to me. I think there were more side effects, but honestly can't remember them all. I will say that I'm grateful that DH stuck with me. It was our first year of marriage, and I was a real bear. :o The first period after Lupron was disastrous, and it happened to be on our 1 year anniversary, too. Yikes. It was very nearly ER material, but I flat out refused. Within 3 months of that time, I had another surgery for the endo, as the Lupron was a massive fail. 2 weeks later I had a hysterectomy. I was 27. Lupron was a massive fail, with a lot of side effects for no real purpose. Long term effects are hard to quantify. I spiraled down and down, and I can't tell what might be a long-term effect of the Lupron. I do have thyroid issues now, my adrenals no longer function (I have Addison's), I have chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia though I tend to view those as symptoms of a larger issue. And there's a lot more. But to be fair, I had tick borne diseases that were undiagnosed, and the combination of Lupron/2 surgeries in quick succession/some other major events ... all of those seemed to work together to create a situation from which anyone would struggle to recover. I am finally back on my feet, but it's taken years and years of specialized care from an amazing doctor to get me here. And I will never be the same. But I'm grateful for every moment. :) So... there's the short version of my Lupron story. One thing though, I will say that Lupron gave me the ability to have the hysterectomy. I needed to feel that I had tried *everything* before I could get to that point of giving up the option of ever having birthchildren. So, in a sense, Lupron freed me to have a hysterectomy, which was good. I had adenomyosis as well as endo, so it really was the best option for me. If I were in your shoes, I would check out the Endometriosis Association, and any other advocacy groups. When I was dealing with it all, the Endo Association was the big one, but there may be more now. I would ask for help finding the real, true specialists in endo surgery. Way back when, there was a doc in Bend, OR and another near Atlanta, GA - they were considered the very best. If I had not opted for the hysterectomy, we'd have flown to one of those for surgery. They were good enough to merit the flight and the extra expense, and their expertise in reaching areas that were otherwise inoperable was renowned. Unfortunately (or fortunately, for me!), I'm pretty far removed from the endo world now, and I can't recommend anyone now. For years after my hyst, I thought I might need to go to the surgeon in Atlanta, as I had (have?) endo on my ureter and bladder, and that was his specialty. Not sure if any of this is helpful. If you have questions, feel free to pm me. I hope you find relief quickly. :grouphug:

I took Lupron for 6 months in 1999. It's been awhile. :) It was not a good experience, and I regret it, too. I will pm you in a bit with more info about the side effects, etc that I experienced. I'm not able to type much right now, and Lupron deserves its own little novella. ETA: DH is sitting here with me, and he says, "Run away screaming."

:grouphug: Oh, poor baby. Poor mama, too.

Aaaaaggghhh! Hearing about your DH's case just gave me the shivers. Really. I'm a mess right now. How long did it last? When will this end? And yes, very contagious. I feel like Typhoid Mary. Although I think once you have immunity to HFM, you won't get it again. Whew. So there's that. Anyone want me to whip up a batch of HFM lollipops, a spin off of the chicken pox lollipop craze? ...Just kidding, of course. :)

Yes. Yes, they do.

My vent (again, for some of you): I have contracted HFM from the kids. This while being treated for both strep and a sinus infection. Strep + Sinus Infection + HFM = Hell. (Why don't we have a flaming hell smiley?) My feet are so red and spotted that I can't walk on them. I hobble around screeching like a monkey in pain. The kids find this funny, so at least we laugh at it. Tragically, my hands are so swollen with welts I can't pick up a coffee cup, which makes me less than patient (as if anyone can be patient while dealing with this mess!). I am contemplating asking DS to create a Rube Goldberg type machine with coffee in tubes to get my caffeine fix. Of course, I'm not sure I can keep it down. :o What I've learned from this is that HFM trumps strep and sinus infections. And whoever said cases are mild in adults - was wrong. Dreadfully, horribly wrong. DH is awesome. I am counting down the hours till he's home and I can take Benadryl and go to bed. Although he does say that this is my penance for never having had chicken pox.

:grouphug:

Well, I'm glad to see that most posters here are able to say the word vagina. :lol: (Sorry, bad reference to another post!) OP here. I don't think we have an asymptomatic carrier in our house. We don't battle strep here normally. We've been sick on and off for 6 weeks, but the kids were both swabbed twice during that time, and it was negative. It was a virus turned sinus infection for them, then Hand, Foot and Mouth Disease. Which was horrible, by the way. For me, it was the same sinus infection - which had cleared up, I'd just finished abx, when all this started, and was feeling pretty well. But I have a compromised immune system, and tend to catch anything that comes my way. I'm not sure where the strep came from, we haven't really left the house since everyone's been so sick (since the kids were contagious, we were keeping them home). The only outside contact was our yummy plate of food from the sweet neighbors whose son had had strep. But he was off abx and well by the time they sent the food. So who knows? They do battle strep frequently, which made me wonder if they have an asymptomatic carrier. I don't know. I guess the good news is ... my sore throat is gone. :hurray: Still taking the abx, of course, and I'll finish the course. The doc said it's not uncommon to have strep with a sinus infection as the post nasal drip gives a nice environment for the strep to grow. Ick. In other news, I now have Hand Foot and Mouth also. :svengo: Feet are so painful I can barely hobble around, and hands are too painful to hold a coffee cup (which is the true tragedy here). Let me tell you, HFM in an adult - it's *not* mild! Oh, the misery.