Pages

Saturday, November 17, 2012

Not Known FMD Symptom, thanks to the Internet!

The other night, I and hubby became panicky when we discovered that our son's fingernail peeled off. We thought it's only one fingernail coming off due to injury when he had slammed the door. What made me freak out was when we found out that all other four fingernails also loosened. We checked his other hand but thanked God there was no sign of peeling off. Then, we looked at his toenails and amazingly, only one foot toes got affected. I stared at my husband and he understood how a mother felt worried about her little one for unknown symptoms to the point of imagining, leukemia, heart failure or any worst illnesses only God's intervention can make a great change. As a habit, I immediately turned to my best friend Google for an answer. And lo, Google's master, the Internet as ever, calmed us down with a very surprising answer! FMD or Foot and Mouth Disease was the culprit!

I'm so grateful to this thread by webmd for the forum by parents whose kids got affected with FMD that confirmed our son had been infected with it too, 6 weeks ago. It was only when our son's fingernail peeled off that we realized he had contracted FMD. I was in India attending an international conference when my husband called me to let me know that our three year old son got fever and had skin rashes on his arms, feet, bottom and some on his face. He thought it was allergy due to his eating egg almost everyday. Hubby rushed to the nearby pharmacy to buy an ointment for skin allergy and paracetamol. As the fever was not too alarming for him to take our son to the doctor, we concluded it was just some kind of simple allergy or German measles that would just subside right away. And it's true, the fever lasted for just a day and the blisters somewhat responded to the allergy ointment. When I arrived from my trip, I noticed his scaly skin. His hands and soles were peeling off like a snake changing its skin. Both hubby and I were baffled and still wondered what it really was.

Upon reading the numerous comments at webmd pointing to the same symptoms we observed from our very own toddler - fever, rashes/blisters, weakening and the later manifestation which is the fingernail peeling off - we have been very much convinced that it is really FMD. It usually affects children and is even deadly if it develops complications especially if the child gets blisters in the mouth causing inability to eat. FMD can cause terrible sore to the throat, so the child won't be able to eat or even drink milk and other liquids which can extremely dehydrate and weaken the child that may affect his/her immune system.

What struck me is that many parents reported that when they brought their child to the doctor about the shedding off of fingernail case, most of the doctors do not know its cause. So in case we didn't see the forum here on the net, what could have been prescribed to our son? Last time, he was misdiagnosed causing his case to worsen so sometimes, I am more scared of seeing the doctor, except our very trusted one.

I have been relieved with lots of health problems, such as my hand injury before and my tennis elbow through the Internet. I always prefer natural remedies, the reason I also share my wonderful experiences here by blogging so others may turn to the wonders of nature. In the case of my son, if we knew the symptoms at early stage, there was no need to panic as it could just heal naturally unless there would be complications. But if taken with proper care through awareness, complications can also be avoided.Now, with all my positive experiences using the Internet to carefully diagnose some health problems, as long as the remedies are natural and I feel that there would be no side effects such as eating lots of pineapple when I got my hand injured by playing volleyball and even medical checkup and drugs didn't heal it, I will always turn to what God intended to heal us - the healing wonders of nature!

Let's keep posting our experiences to help others especially to explain some uncommon phenomenon as well as using natural remedies. Thanks to the websites with these kinds of advocacy as they save lives and calm down panicking people like me. I am 101 percent pushing and supporting them. For the readers, just try to be careful and critical enough in using the information that you get from the Internet. Check out how reliable the information provided. For instance, it's not only 10 parents who testified about the FMD symptom of peeling off fingers, it was over 50 cases so it was highly reliable. All the manifestations the forum participants described were all consistent with my child's. Hope medical practitioners are updating themselves so they won't make parents freak out for such unknown cases like FMD causing peeling off of fingernails. They should also get information from the net as some diseases such as FMD are just developing like FMD, they might have not learned it in med school at their time.



1 comments:

nice A said...

Please share your experience of FMD if you have one. Thanks.

Post a Comment

Thank you for taking time to stop by my blog and for sharing your thoughts:)