A few days ago, my toddler suddenly started running temperature overnight and I could not just lay my hands on what could be wrong. He was playing quite fine just before sleeping. I quickly did the normal thing that is supposed to be done in this situation - dipped a small towel in tepid water and tried to bring his body temperature down with it in addition to giving him paracetamol syrup. It worked but only for a while.
We all hardly slept till the break of dawn. Then, I had to decide between going to the hospital amidst the lockdown and the pandemic or just visit a nearby pharmacy for medical advice. I chose the latter because it seems easier and safer. By this time, some little rashes can be observed on his feet. Could he be reacting to something?
I showed the Pharmacist on duty the rashes and complained about the fever. She prescribed an antihistamine syrup (Atadyn) for the rashes and ibuprofen for the fever. These actually confirmed my self-diagnosis and I felt a bit relieved. The fever got worse!
Later in the night, he had serious difficulty sleeping and his breathing was quite heavy. Knowing the COVID-19 infection in babies has thrown up several strange symptoms, I feared the worst. It was later in the middle of the night that more of the rashes came out, this time around, on his body. Then it dawned on me - it was measles.
It was a bit surprising because his vaccination is up to date. Even though he is just 18 months, he got his first measles vaccination around 12 months and the second one is not supposed to come up till between 3 to 4 years old according to medical advice.
According to the Center for Disease Control, a single dose of the measles vaccine (known as the MMR vaccine) is supposed to have 93% effectiveness in the prevention of the viral disease while the administration of the second dose will increase the effectiveness to 97%. Perhaps my son's case represents the 7% exemption for the first dose.
Well, now that it has happened, next is to look for the way forward. Knowing that viral infections mostly have no known cure till today, the only thing I could do was to continue to manage his body temperature and other symptoms that started manifesting themselves (coughing and runny nose). In addition, I ensured that he was taking enough fluid and multivitamins to prop up his immune system.
Luckily for me and for him, the fever went down the following dawn and the appetite which has waned since the beginning of the fever started returning in bits. Although the rashes were still obvious on his skin, normal toddler activities gradually resumed.
One more thing, he is almost sure not to contract the virus again with or without him taking the second dose of the measles vaccine. This is quite the case with most viral infections. Once the body system of an individual is able to fight off a viral infection, it develops an antibody that helps guard the body system against a re-infection by the virus.
