Rob vs. the Pox

I think Rob has the chicken pox. He's got something hideous and rashy at any rate. He's eaten nothing new or interesting lately, and the Sudafed he took did nothing to bring the welts down. Don't think it's bedbugs - we heated up his bed & his spot on the couch & no small blood-sucking sesame-seed sized crawlies surfaced. It also spread from the time he woke up from just his back, to his stomach, & from there up his neck & down into his crotch. He's been kind of feverish these past couple of days, but he's worked himself into a fine state of panic attack over me telling him to get a job. It's either the pox or he's managed to give himself anxiety hives.

Our general practitioner died earlier this month - September 11, to be exact. He was on his way back home to Ireland & collapsed at the airport. He was a great old-time country doctor. Dr. Peter Mattimoe, Obituary

Dr. Mattimoe was really just a nice guy. I can't help but picture this in my head, though. The corpse in the grave next to him learns that he was a doctor in life, knocks on his coffin, waggles some decomposed body part at the good Doctor & says, "Hey, does this look infected to you?"

Rob's Rash (Because I Know You All Want to Know)

It's getting worse. He's starting to look like all the people in Google's image search for rash. Went to a doctor today, she said it was fungal. Ew. So we're going to a dermatologist tomorrow for a second opinion. Luckily I am still spot-free. Or as spot free as my skin will let me be on a normal week preceding the monthly annoyances.

Medical Update (10:20am, 9/21): We have a confirmed diagnosis, finally. Rob has something called 'Pityriasis rosea' - or PR. It's kind of like chicken pox, only the spots last much, much longer. It starts out with a large welt on the torso (a herald patch) & spreads as smaller welts in a vague 'pine tree' pattern from there. Because the herald patch is usually round & sometimes scaly, a lot of people mistake it for ringworm. It's viral, & possibly a re-emergence of a non-STD herpes virus that most people gain an immunity to when they're kids. As we all know, Rob was a sheltered child & had very little contact with the outside world of childhood diseases, so his immune system is a wimp. I probably won't catch it - but it is the second case the dermatologist has seen in the past couple of weeks. He said that spring & fall are when this particular bug pops up & it gets more common with the monsoon's humidity (the derm guy is from India, so he's pretty familiar w/emergent tropical skin conditions). They gave us this pamphlet & Rob really looks like the photos in it. They sent another doctor in to look at Rob so she would know what she was looking at if she sees it again.