Skip to main content

Apple Disease

Osamu’s face has been weirdly red for the past few days. At first, we just thought he was flushed from running around, but then we all started giving him that look, the concerned parent look. He caught on pretty quickly, especially after seeing his reflection, and kept insisting, “I’m just hot from playing with Kenzo!”

Turns out, nope. Not just running. Apple Disease.

Eri took him to the doctor after kindergarten today, and that’s what they diagnosed him with. I had never even heard of Apple Disease before, and when I looked it up in English, it still made no sense to me. Apparently it's called Fifth Disease, which sounds way more ominous than Apple Disease. What happened to the first four diseases?

It's been spreading around Sendai lately, but it's one of those illnesses that is more of an inconvenience than anything serious. Kids turn bright red, feel pretty blah, and sometimes run a slightly higher temperature, luckily not so much in Osamu’s case. Oh but the best part is the bright red face only shows up after they are no longer contagious. When kids are actually spreading it, they look totally normal. No warning, no way to stop it. Just a secret virus. That scares me. Like what if a virus that is lethal spread that way? Yay for random thoughts that make no sense.

And also there's no medicine for Apple Disease. You just wait it out, and in a week the redness fades. Osamu is totally fine, just looking like he spent too much time in the sun or blushing intensely.

If kids are gonna catch something, you could do a lot worse than Apple Disease. It even sounds kind of fun. Apples are great. People love apples.

Outside the pharmacy enjoying a snack.

The doctor prescribed some itch cream and a backup fever reducer. By evening he was already looking better.

He graduates from kindergarten in 9 days and starts first grade in 29 days.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

lookin tired/feelin good

I can't even read the clock right. Eri: "You're going to soccer, right? Aren't you a bit early?" Me: "Yeah! We usually leave at this time and get there right on time. We gotta go! Let's go guys!" Soccer club starts at 10 a.m. The boys know that when the long hand on the clock gets to the 8 (9:40) it's time to go to the bathroom and get our socks and shoes on and head down to the car. The big hand was on 8. The problem that Eri saw was the short hand. It was 8:40, not 9:40. I'm going nuts. Slowly . Rapidly. An hour later, after I slowly enjoyed my coffee and disposed of the last beetle (yes, all four beetles have now gone back to the earth) and cleaned his bug box to make room for new bug acquisitions and the boys chilled out on the sofa watching TV, we set off. While the boys played soccer I headed across the parking lot to grab them some juice boxes for a job well done. This is not standard procedure, but Kenzo made his comeback today after ...
1 comment
Read more

Experiences I Will Never Know About

Eri and I were checking out one of Kenzo's school notebooks tonight. This page has so much going on, and I love all of it. It made me realize something that I can easily forget - he's a person. He has a life separate from mine, lives each day having experiences that I will never know about, and has thoughts and ideas that I can't nor should get in the way of. "Thank you for doing everything," she said. Eri walked with me this morning as I went around the neighborhood and delivered planter box maintenance information and schedules to various folks.  We stopped at the first house and I rang the doorbell and handed the old lady the three-page information sheet I had made and copied and we exchanged greetings and then I realized this is going to take forever if I ring every single person’s doorbell and chit-chat with them. I’ve got 20+ more of these to hand out.  So we started just sticking them in people's mailboxes and made better time. Most folks aren’t home an...
Post a Comment
Read more

Certain Luxuries

I work from home. My office is in Osamu's future bedroom, though he doesn't know it yet. At some point a few years down the line he will probably start to yearn for his own space. For the time being he and Kenzo share the room next door and sleep in a bunk bed and have a grand time playing, roughhousing, and quarreling. As brothers are prone to do. I started the day with a two-hour meeting with an esteemed co-worker who is based in a city far away. He manages a team associated with mine, and I value our developing relationship. We're both in management positions where people depend on us, and for my part as a relatively new manager I respect and try as often as possible to seek out his advice and perspectives.  We're very different, though. We dance around the topic, but it's pretty clear that one of our differences is that I embrace ambiguity and he does not. I think that it's okay if meetings don't end with a clear solution, as long as the relationship be...
Post a Comment
Read more