She looked at the mother, who had her computer open.
She doused it with hydrogen peroxide, and the mark disappeared within a couple of days.Īdvani felt a burst of excitement. It gave her a little nibble, which barely broke the skin. She worried that it might get run over, so she picked it up and moved it. A few days before she got sick, she had seen what she thought was a baby mouse in the middle of the road. Had she been bitten by one? No, she answered. Had she been scratched or bitten by the kittens? No, they weren’t house cats, the young woman replied they were barn cats, there to catch rats. There were chickens, but they weren’t in the barn. She had questions about the animals she was exposed to in the barn where the horses she rode were kept. The next morning, Advani returned to see the patient. “Tell me everything that happened,” she said. She introduced herself to the patient and her mother, then sat down. Sonali Advani, an infectious-disease physician. That evening, the patient was seen by Dr. The decision was made to admit her to the hospital to treat her pain. It helped a little, but she was still so uncomfortable that she couldn’t walk. In the emergency room, the patient was given an anti-inflammatory medication called Toradol and prednisone for her joint pain. She didn’t have any sores in her mouth, and her joint pain was intense, despite the powerful painkillers her doctor prescribed. Finally, most people with hand, foot and mouth had sores in their mouths and only mild joint pain. Most kids with this virus had a low-grade fever, but hers was still high, even when taking ibuprofen and acetaminophen. It was supposed to last a little over a week she was deep into the second week and still felt more miserable every day. When the young woman read up on hand, foot and mouth, she just couldn’t believe that was what she had. The coxsackievirus test would take a while, but the doctor assured her that it was the most likely diagnosis. And it wasn’t rheumatoid arthritis or lupus. The tests indicated that she didn’t have any of the usual tick-borne infections. When she didn’t get better, her doctor sent off blood tests to look for the coxsackievirus, the most common cause of hand, foot and mouth disease, as well as other possibilities. Walking was nearly impossible, and her wrists and hands were so sore she couldn’t type on her phone. The pain in her joints was incapacitating. That was after a few visits to urgent care and the woman’s primary-care doctor.īut she didn’t.
She’d already taken her daughter to the E.R. They made their way in the predawn light to the emergency room at nearby Yale New Haven Hospital.
She helped her daughter out of bed, then hurried to get dressed. An avid equestrienne for most of her life, the young woman had gritted her teeth through sprained wrists and ankles, horse-trodden feet and, last year, a fracture. The mother had never seen her in this kind of pain. First her right knee became stiff and swollen. Then she broke out in a rash on her hands and feet. The vomiting stopped, but the fever continued. Her symptoms started with a couple of days of nonstop vomiting and a fever of 103. The young woman had been crying in pain all night - and for the past three weeks. “We’re going to the hospital,” the mother said to her 24-year-old daughter.