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Home › Articles › Illnesses, Diseases & Disorders › Kawasaki Disease

Kawasaki Disease

How Much do You Know About This Infectious Illness?

By Jenn Director Knudsen

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There's nothing like a nasty illness to kick a child's thumb-sucking habit.

Ultrasound images months before my first daughter was born showed her sucking her thumb in utero. Once born, Alyssa found that delectable digit at 3 weeks of age and has used it ever since to self-soothe. Not ambidextrous, Alyssa sucks only her left thumb.

Over Labor Day weekend last September, Alyssa grew a bit pale and started sucking her thumb less and less. Maybe my 5-year-old, on the cusp of kindergarten, began viewing thumb-sucking as solely the provenance of younger kids, I mused.

That, or her body was nursing a mighty malady.

Unfortunately, the latter proved true. I should have realized something other than "growing up" was going on when Alyssa started complaining her thumb no longer "tasted any good."

The Onset of Kawasaki Disease
And, in the days that followed, it became outwardly obvious why her thumb – and all food and beverages, water included – started to taste bad to her.

On the first day of school, she broke out in a body rash, with the raised pink bumps concentrated in and around her genitals. Then she spiked a mild fever. Her pallor continued. Her cheeks, wrists, ankles, fingers and toes began to look plumper.

On day three, our pediatrician diagnosed Roseola and said her symptoms would disappear in about two days, and to stay out of school until the fever went away. All this during her first week as a school-age kid! Alyssa was sad but handled it well, even when little sister, Hayley, got to trot off to preschool.

Instead of the stealthy fever abating, it just hung on. And Alyssa's symptoms worsened. The whites of her eyes turned pink; her tongue enlarged, turned bright red and the taste buds swelled and yellowed; her lips, also puffy, started to crack. She stopped eating and drinking anything of substance. She became highly irritable. And the skin on her fingers and toes started molting like a duck's feathers.


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