Foreseer of Doom

It is rather apocalyptic that I mention Natalie’s future life plans and, in the previous post, wonder what the people who were born 100 years ago would think of the early ‘70s, because, if Natalie had been born 100 years ago, she might not have made it past her third birthday. Fairly shocking statement, I know, but that would be the facts of the 19th Century. However, that’s not the case, thanks to Alexander Fleming, who discovered Penicillin in 1928. As a result, Natalie will live to a ripe old age, no doubt.

Saturday, Natalie complained of a sore throat, so she opened it up, stuck out her tongue so we could gaze in and her tonsils were the size of cherries, and just as red. On Sunday, she came down with a 102-degree fever and was very tired, so much so, that last night, she got up sometime in the middle of the night, used the bathroom, left the light on and went back to her own bed, highly suspect (and today, she napped for four hours, which has never happened).

Today, Kara took her in to see the family doctor and came back with a report that she has Scarlet Fever and streptococcal (aka strep throat), a very potentially fatal bacteria and a deadly combination that leads to rheumatic fever. Now, Natalie’s hopped up on amoxicillin, to which she’s no stranger to the taste thanks in part to Day Care’s proclivity to admit children even though they’re sick and because of her extensive ear infections last year (she had eight of them).

Ear infections are nothing compared to something so dangerous and feared as Scarlet Fever once was… it is a romantic killer, according to the literature you’re forced to read in high school. Remember reading Margery Williams’ The Velveteen Rabbit? That little boy had Scarlet Fever and they had to burn all of his toys! Burn!?! Bubby, Little Buffalo and Pink Bear aren’t going to be too keen on that turn of events, not to mention the hoards of other stuffed livestock that inhabit her room. More? Okay, Beth in Little Women (Louisa May Alcott) is killed by the illness, and Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote about her older sister in By the Shores of Silver Lake who went blind because of Scarlet Fever. Yikes, burnings, blindness and death, not to mention the months of illness it once caused, no little girl should go through that, but modern science to the rescue.

After her first dose of antibiotics, Gnat is already on the mend, but we’re still going to take it easy for a couple of days; thank goodness for Alexander Fleming indeed… I guess, more specifically, thanks to SmithKline Beecham, who first sold the antibiotic in 1998. Given all of the amoxicillin that has flowed through this house in the last two years, I’m glad she was born in 2003 and that we didn’t have a shotgun wedding in 1997!