August 30th/ whooping cough vaccine

Soon most of the schools will be back in session and along with that come the expected coughs and colds.
Today we saw several cases of hand/foot/mouth.
It isn't going wild yet, but every season when I see these first couple of cases I always expect the dozens to come along soon.
We saw several cases of strep throat as well as many ear infections today.
Several parents called about their children with "Mystery rashes". The kids are not terribly bothered, and they don't have fevers, so we will do the wait and see approach.
Lots of parents are checking in about the whooping cough outbreak.
We start vaccinating the children against this as early as 6 weeks. The vaccine is the DTaP. D=diptheria T= tetanus P=Pertussis. Pertussis is another name for whooping cough.
To complicate things further, our DTaP is generally given as part of a combination vaccine called Pentacel.
If you are following the standard vaccination schedule your baby is protected.
They usually get the initial series at 2, 4 and 6 months. The first booster is given at 1 year. One more booster is given between 4-6 years.
We strongly suggest that all parents and caregivers get the adult version of the shot called the TDaP. This will give tetanus protection as well.

~Stay well
Nurse Judy

August 23rd

For the first time all summer I am delighted to tell everyone to put on that sunblock!!

It was fairly mellow in here today. We are still doing lots of summertime checkups.
The sick patients presented with coughs, ear infections and some mild fevers.
Last week I thought I was starting to see some Hand/Foot/Mouth, but haven't heard of any new cases showing up.

Stay well
~Nurse Judy

Back to school

Hard to believe that a good many of our kids started school already today.
Today the biggest complaint has been a moderate fever.
Many of the children started it by vomiting once.
So far the patients are on the first or second day of this, so no guesses yet as to how long it lasts.
Any fever that hangs on longer than 3 days is worth calling about.

We are also seeing lots of little coughs and colds.
Charity says she has gotten lots of calls about a mysterious rash on the trunk that doesn't seem to bother the kids too much.

I will check in if anything else interesting seems to be making the rounds

~Nurse Judy

August 9th update

We are seeing all sorts of rashes.
Most of them are the "lets wait and see" variety and end up fading away without much intervention.
We have seen all sorts of interesting bites.
Some spider bites will remain quite red and hard for more than a week. They need attention if the redness gets more intense or there are any red streaks coming from the area.

There is a fairly mild cold and cough making the rounds.

Hard to believe that school will be starting soon. I anticipate that we will see plenty more things going around once that happens. We will keep you up dated on what we are seeing here.
Stay well
~Judy

Calling all nebulizers!!

Wowza! We are missing quite few of our in house and loaner nebulizers. If you have one at home, please bring it back!!!

we are missing nebulizer numbers-

1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, one sport nebulizer and TWO "office use only" nebulizers.


We need these for our wheezers. If you need long term neb therapy best to buy your own. Usually covered by insurance.


In other news-

We have croup going around, vomiting with fever, and roseola. If you go hiking please do a careful tick check.

Hope everyone is having a fab Summer :-)

Nurse Charity

August check in

I was gone last week,(to the land where there are fireflies and you can wear shorts outside in the evening) but Charity reports seeing
Croup
a virus with a rash
vomiting with fever


Our flu mist has arrived,
Hopefully we will protect everyone and not see much flu this year.
Stay well!
~Judy