Fifth

A couple weeks ago, Sophia was lethargic and irritable, to the point of whimpering, and Tricia took her temperature and discovered it was 104F. That's high enough to be concerned (higher than she had ever been before), so we went to the clinic and saw the doctor, who had a quick look and said that she had Fifth Disease. This is something we had never heard of before, but it seems as though it is not that unusual - it's called fifth because it is the fifth of the common childhood rashes (measles, chickenpox, rubella, scarlet fever, and fifth). It presents with "face-slap rashes", which we hadn't picked up on (Sophia's cheeks are red from time to time but they were definitely redder this time) but the doctor saw it at once. As with most of these things, there isn't much to do but wait it out. We gave her Tylenol and put her to bed early, and for the next week she was slow-moving and had a fluctuating temperature between 100 and 104. She's fine now, of course. The incubation period is a couple weeks and she was contagious before she started to have symptoms, so we're not sure where she got it or if she passed it on, but that's the way these childhood diseases go, and, I suspect, why they are so common.