Who gets the Mumps these days?

ANDREW!!!!!!!

(The right side of Andrew's face is swollen more than the left. The knot(mumps) is right near his temple on each side of his face.)

On June 10th, he woke up with swollen knots on both sides of his face. Within a few hours, his forehead had a knot on it and the back of his head had two knots and was swollen. I took him and Hannah ( I will get to her in a minute.) to the doctor. The doctor looked at him quite puzzled. She said that she had never seen a case of the Mumps but thought(???) that this is what he had. She had the nurse swab the inside of his mouth and then draw some blood. She said that the Mumps is virus. If the blood work comes back and it is NOT bacterial then she is 95% sure it is the Mumps. However, the Mumps test will not be back until Friday. Andrew's blood work came back positive for a virus. Now we are waiting to see if it is truly the MUMPS.

Hannah had a temperature of 101 to 104.2 late on Tuesday(6/9/09) and during the night. I would not have taken her to the doctor because she was showing no other signs of illness. She was only complaining of a tummy ache. I felt the tummy ache was because of the medicine I was giving her for the fever and the fact that she was not eating. I usually let at least 3 days go by before going to the doctor in case it is something viral. However, since I was taking Andrew I decided to go ahead and take Hannah. At least the doctor could look in her ears and throat and tell me if anything was going on.

When she looked at Hannah she said that she saw NO signs of a cold. She said that most likely Hannah had the Mumps virus but not "full blown Mumps" because she had been vaccinated. Since we don't have Andrew's medical records from birth to age 5, the doctor felt like he didn't get vaccinated or at least didn't get the complete series.

She said that the Mumps are hardly ever seen anymore and encouraged me to look up the virus on the Internet. She went onto say that children who have been vaccinated (like Hannah) can still get the virus and have some of the symptoms or just be a carrier. She said that Andrew would have been contagious 6 days prior to the breakout until 9 days after the swelling goes away. She said that the virus can last up to 20 days from the time the mumps appear.

She said that most of the time the swelling is painful and the patient doesn't feel well. Thankfully, Andrew is not feeling bad. He does say that his head hurts a little but he is running, eating, and playing like normal. Hannah is a little grumpy and when her temperature goes up she doesn't feel well. But once the fever goes down with medicine, she is playing fine.

Here is what Andrew looked like today. DAY 2 (6/11/09)

This morning the right side of his face was swollen. His right eye is swollen more than his left and the knots seem to have gone down some. He still feels fine. Hannah's temperature is still 101-102 without medicine.