The Curious Case of Pox Upon Our House

A very curious case of illnesses has befallen the Svellingers of late. 

It all kicked off a week before Halloween with Impetigo. 

Impetigo?  Say you. Aye. It were indeed Impetigo, says I. 

And now that I’ve gratuitously brought you round the horn from Shakespeare to pirates, I’ll drag it on no further.

BILGE WATER! I exclaimed with incredulity when Craig looked up from his phone and said the word “impetigo.”

That’s one of those awful rashes that Google gets its jollies from when all the new moms and their anxious fingers come a’tapping the moment their newborn bb gets a diaper rash and she’s taxed on sleep and brain cells and the panic sets in that instead of obsessing over her birth plan, she should have instead taken a course on childhood illnesses— BUT NOBODY TELLS YOU.

“Oh let’s hit this girl up with pages of impetigo pics and drive that cortisol up to the maxxxx,” Dr. Google chuckles to itself the moment that poor rookie mom hits the search button. 

It was one of those rashes I, too, stumbled upon over a decade ago (yes, smartphones existed then) in the wee hours while I lay awake with a rashy baby googling all of his symptoms; One of those kinds of rashes I convinced myself “ok that’s like a third world problem I’ll never see.” 

So, when about a wretched 6 weeks ago, after a few days of treating our son for poison Ivy, or sumac, or oak, and it wasn’t going away, but instead it blistered up and started oozing and crusting in as grotesque a manner as one might imagine when they’re forced to read the word ”ooze”, we knew it wasn’t a simple poison of the proverbial Ivy. This stout-hearted kid suffers eczema and apparently, kids who suffer eczema are prone to developing impetigo (staph, essentially) if an eczema rash becomes infected. 

The irritating part is that his eczema had been doing quite well. But there must have been a place we didn’t notice— the armpit. And sure enough, after 2 days of antibiotics, the spread had stopped and the inflammation had quieted. It was miraculous. A week of ointment application and bandage changes 3 times daily, and he was cured. 

Oh, the sanitizing we did.  Impetigo is contagious as wildfire. I’ve got a preschooler and a toddler and was nervous about them catching it. But luckily we’d been given more antibiotics and mupirocin than needed so to the shelves they went, just in case. (DON’T even get me started on the maddness used to pronounce “impetigo” and then turn around to look at “mupirocin” and think you’re the king of the English Language castle, because no, madam, you’re the jester. The trials.)

Even for just one kid, it was exhausting. The constant reminding everyone to hand wash —more so than I usually do— not to share cups or food or even blankets, towels, the remote; and then to be sanitizing like a —I wanted to say hospital ward but I do not believe they are what they say they are, so yeah— sanitizing like a mother. It was something.

Let’s take a step one week even further back. I know, I don’t like traveling with the author backwards in a forward propelling story too much either. A brief detour. Just before yon impuhTYEgo snuck into the house, I nervously made the decision to completely close up Brass & Mint co.’s website until 2023. That was kind of a scary step to take, as Christmas orders provide a significant chunk of sales for my business. I also made an IG announcement that I would not be doing any more influencer-type partnerships. October comes around and as an influencer who also runs her own small business- the promotions and sharings and postings becomes absolutely nuts until midway through December. I’ve been through it for a handful of years and something prompted me to opt out. Definitely a Holy Spirit lead decision, and Deo Gratias indeed.

Fast forward through the Tarly/Jorah Mormont-ious proceedings of Impetigo bandages: It felt like I had finally sat down with a heavy sigh of  “glad that’s over with” when a few days later Jonah sat up from his nap and began to cough. I could already hear tightness in his throat and I knew it was something sinister. 

That night, after I’d put him to bed, I lay there next to him for just a minute, feeling that he was feverish, but noting that it was low grade, I told myself it was simply a little cold. But suddenly he was wheezing, and then he was crying, and the stridor was so tight and high, he couldn’t get a word out for lack of breath. 

He kept attempting to say “mom” but all he could get out was “mmm—” before barking coughs interrupted.  

Noticing that his lips and finger tips were blue, I ran him to the shower, blasted hot water and stood there fully clothed as the steam rolled upward. Craig came in wearing a hoodie and shoes. He suffered asthma as a child and has a better sense than I do of when breathing struggle is dangerous. He had already started the car. “We need to take him.”  I was shaking in fear from head to toe and agreed. Of our six children, I’d never heard stridor like that. 

So we left. Left the rest of the kids, instructing our oldest boys what to do, giving them my phone so we could update them from Craig’s phone while they awaited my sweet parents who jumped out of bed and drove 45 minutes to stay with them at the house until we got back. I know that was a long sentence— you’re supposed to feel out of breath. 

Jonah had fully awoken by this time and was quite enjoying the middle of the night drive to “a place!” His breathing had gotten much better but that barking cough had croup written all over it. 

Children’s hospital is a 40 minute drive from us and when we got there, I heard before I saw: a waiting room filled with croup-y toddlers in their pajamas with their bleary-eyed mamas and daddies. So many sick toddlers. We went through triage and they asked a question I am used to hearing “is he up to date on his vaccines?”

This is a tricky scenario.

I know the staff has to ask this q to rule out the likely possibility of the coordinating illnesses. The problem comes that when I answer with a direct “no”, the temperature of all the nurses in the room usually becomes quite chilly. I have a paralyzing fear of my kids being medically kidnapped and forcibly vaccinated, because you see, they did it to one of my newborns, kept him in “the nursery” for two hours against both my verbal and written consent, and they did it before discovering that he was born with a congenital condition in which vaccines are CONTRAINDICATED. If we had come in for a concussion or a broken arm, for example, I would have, let us say, given a rather obscure truth, because the question is irrelevant to the acute injury and it only complicates things. The last thing I want for, say, my autistic child with a brain injury is a vaccine. I know for a fact that there are some establishments that will force the additional procedure on a patient when they come in for something totally irrelevant. Don’t even @ me on the tetanus shot (do your research).  In this instance, I was compelled to directly give a point-blank negative as the answer. Then they followed up with “has he been recently exposed to measles or chicken pox?” Which I thought strange. I’ve never heard that follow up q before. Logged it away.

The question I should have asked is “is my son currently being exposed to the illnesses you just mentioned?”

Why did I drag that whole scene on so long, you ask yourself. I suppose for my sanity’s sake, really. But you’ll see the other reason soon enough.

The wait to be seen was 3.5 hours at a minimum. We checked in and sat. And sat. and sat in the petri dish pond of dozens of sick, coughing toddlers. And Jonah was -fine. His cough was present but his breathing fine. I carried him down a hall to the other side of the hospital and he got down and sat at a little kids table (I know, mistake. I corrected my thoughts “Let go of your germaphobia. It’s fine.”).  Is it not an anomaly that I’m a bit of a germaphobe who quit vaxxing her kids? Not really, but it does indeed appear that way. I don’t like illness and the massive inconvenience of it, and the suffering my children endure, but I dislike neurotoxins, murder and exploitation of the human body, and vaccine injuries much more.

I bounced Jonah on my hip, walking back to the main waiting area and one look at Craig told me we had been thinking the same thing: the wait is not worth it. If Jonah were in true danger, they would have admitted him asap. 

So we left. 

That night I sat up with him, rushing him into the small bathroom down the hall, cranking the shower on high, swaying him on my hip as the steam opened his airways once again, nursing him until he fell back asleep. Rinse, repeat every few hours. 

The next day he was a new man, but with croup. It was only three brutal nights of steam shower runs which lessened each night before finally a full night of rest. Then it hit Dominic and Jude, but to significantly less degrees. With a bit of OnGuard in the diffuser and some natural cough syrup, they were more like your average cold-haver. 

The week passed and all the couch sleeping and living room floor camping had been put away. Sheets had been washed, my birthday rolled through somewhere in the midst of it, all while we had to suddenly replace our HVAC, had guys coming in and out of our house to work on some scheduled home reno we’re chipping away at in the basement, and we were now looking into November and eventually, Thanksgiving. 

And so once again, I heaved a sigh and began to mentally sit back and relax when WHAT. DO. YOU. KNOW. another rash approacheth. 

This one had a different pattern than impetigo: Red, smaller bumps which blistered up like impetigo, except the blisters were clear, not yellowish, and very, very itchy. 

It was Jonah.

Every mom in the world will now have passed out after imagining battling a 2 year old with an itch he’s not supposed to scratch. 

I started him on antibiotics assuming with some trepidation that it had to be impetigo —but caught it 2-3 weeks later? Had I left a surface unwiped? Had a hand towel not been changed out? 

24 hours went by and this rash had multiplied. Ok. So it’s not bacterial then. It’s not impetigo. The antibiotics aren’t working. 

Then WHAT the heck is it?! I kept asking out loud. 

It’s chicken pox, said Craig, looking up from his phone once more. 

Ha. The ol’ bilge water in the bottom of the ship sloshed around again, hiccuping drunkenly. It is definitely NOT chicken pox, I blurted out loudly, in false overconfidence. 

That’s like a dinosaur illness these days. People vax their kids for it and more importantly, we hadn’t been out of the house for literally, and I mean literally, 3 weeks. As an aside: I have an autoimmune disease and before finding my path to healing, I was taking immune modifying drugs. A simple hug landed me in the ER with staph. I caught strep throat from my kids and had to go to the ER because it was so aggressive. My lash tech infected my eyes with her ungloved, phone tapping hands. It felt like the breeze got me sick for no reason. I UNDERSTAND what it’s like to be medically fragile to some degree, and I understand the intense fear people express about contagions etc. So when we are sick, we stay the heck home. If one of my kids is sick, I assume the others will follow, even if we have a buffer day of no one showing symptoms. No, we don’t frantically escape to a Tarjay Vacay in the middle of it. I do not want to be responsible for mindlessly spreading sickness. We cancelled a planned surprise trip to take the boys to Indiana for a college basketball tournament for which we’d rented an Air BnB. Much disappointment.

But then I remembered. We had been out of the house. Jonah had been to the hospital. He had walked around the kiddie section and sat at a kiddie table. And on the way home, he fell asleep and I took him straight to bed and didn’t even think of washing him off. 

And that was it. We treated him with calamine lotion and frequent baths, all the while I remained skeptical. Then when it spread to his scalp and face, I supposed I was a believer. —still! So strange to utter the words CHICKEN POX! 

I mean really! 

We waited with baited breath for the boys to catch on. But they didn’t. Hm. It’s fast spreading, right? Super contagious, right? Was it really chickenpox? WHAT ELSE COULD IT HAVE BEEN?!?! 

And then, just as I began to see Jonah’s pox slow down and begin the healing process, two of the boys got fevers and a cough. 

Ah ha. Here we go. Welcome to the party. 

Jude peaked a pretty high fever and didn’t get up for a full 24 hours as I pushed electrolytes and popsicles and bananas at him and watched him like a mother hen because he has a history of febrile seizures. But by the second day, he was sitting up. Talking, eating a bit more, taking long naps, and his fever broke. 

But no pox. Not on anyone. 

The week ended and then— phase  84,652,729. 

The dominoes began falling starting with Lex, then Colin, then Emmett, then Dominic, and finally Jude (It’s curious to note that both he and Dominic broke out last. I feel like it should logically follow that they would break out with the pox first as they showed symptoms first, but it was the reverse.) 

Lex had it worst. He’s 13 and right at the cusp of apparently what could be a dangerous age to have complications from chicken pox. He was shocked to silence with it and I could have cried as I dabbed at his beautiful face covered in itching pustules, but I did not.  Craig and I somehow worked in unspoken shifts tending to him. Craig, in the mornings and myself on the nightwatch. Calamine lotion, loose clothing, oatmeal and baking soda baths in lukewarm water, sovereign silver swished in the mouth and gargled in the throat where we found still more blisters. I remember having chickenpox when I was about 7 years old, but I do not remember the HD version I was looking at right now. 

And after two days, Collin needed the same treatments. 

Then Emmett, who suffered so silently it broke my heart. He got pox in his throat and calmly mentioned to me that it hurt, but said no more. 

The Lord granted us a few days lull in between so that we didn’t have to treat everyone together at the same time. And here we are at the end.  Our last sickly guy has stopped producing new pox. 

I get it. I understand why parents get their kids vaccinated for this. It’s an enormous ordeal and the illness moves slowly and irratically. If I had to work and couldn’t do it from home, I would have literally gone a month without pay. 

Craig and I sacrificed greatly and evaluated our priorities at the beginning so that we could live today what we hoped for then. 

We are ProLife, unapologetically, and using aborted fetal cells in the making, testing or ingredients of any product is full stop a non-negotiable, even for the sake of the health of our own children.  

The life of my child or the convenience of my lifestyle never warrants the taking of someone else’s life— even if it was taken at an earlier time or taken at the consent of the mother. Vegans understand this about animals, but an entire group of people won’t stretch it to the human person, and instead they call it “choice” and “clumps of cells” and “parasites”. (If you look up the method for obtaining an aborted fetus for testing, you’ll find, to your horror, that they birth the child alive , at 3+months when the organs have developed, into a bag of saline. And they don’t just use one baby. They use many because often, as experimentation tends to go, they don’t get the perfect specimen from the start Source.  <— that specific study is for the making of the chickenpox, or Varicella, vaccine.) Also, there’s that startling correlation between the rise of autism and use of aborted fetal cells in vaccines. But you know what they say “correlation does nOt eQuAl cAuSaTiOn” as if correlation means nothing in the face of the Lord of Science, paid for by arms of the vaccine maker$  —unless the correlation favors an agenda. 🤔

—but I understand it. This was really hard. But not the end of the world. My kids have immunity now (And Craig and I probably got a healthy booster, too). They all agree that it was worth it. 

“ONE AND DONE!” they started hollering throughout the house to rally each other as each brother woke up with a face full of pox. 

So now that November is literally over (today is the 30th.), I shall recline in my mental chaise long and heave a sigh once more. 

*The curtains begin to fall upon the stage of our Shakespearean tale of plagues & poxes —but suddenly, it stops*

Enter stage right: A red and painful eyeball. 

Ah, uveitis. Thou damned and luxurious goat.  

*musical finale flourish*