A Butterfly Flaps Its Wings

Anyone who doubts the validity of chaos theory has never had a child … or been within 50 yards of other parents. Even if you cannot believe that a butterfly flapping its wings in China could possibly have an affect on the weather anywhere east of L.A., hang out in a playgroup for a while. You’ll see the theory holds water. Let me demonstrate. Forget the butterfly, and try this on: A three-year-old snacks on Xanax in Orlando and I’m unable to go my cousins’ double baby shower in San Diego. And no … it wasn’t my three-year-old. This particular three-year-old belongs to … let’s just call her Grossly Negligent Parent* because … well … she is.

So it’s a spring morning in May, just a few days before I’m supposed to jet to San Diego. My cousin Jill had married a nice guy named Jesse and a few months later Rachel married Jill’s brother Dan. Now Jill and Rachel were pregnant and due within a few weeks of each other. We hadn’t been able to be at Dan and Rachel’s wedding because they got married in a tiny little slip of a beach town in Mexico and Fletcher hadn’t been immunized yet against whatever germs he could pick up there. I wanted to do my cousinly duty and at least show my face at the shower.

I’d just dropped Fletcher at nursery school and was on my way to breakfast when I got a panicked phone call from a girlfriend. GNP’s toddler had just swallowed an an indeterminate amount of Xanax and been rushed to the emergency room by ambulance. She was babysitting GNP’s newborn while GNP was at the ER. Could I come help?

Now follow this thread, because it’s important. My friend, let’s call her Andrea*, had been driving her toddler Henry to the pediatrician for a routine post-ear-infection check. She’d spun her car around, called her husband out of a meeting to take Henry to the doctor in her stead and headed over to NGP’s where she was awaiting my arrival.

For a while we just stared at the snoozing newborn (unless it’s yours, they’re really not that interesting at this stage) and debated how a three-year-old even got his pudgy little hands on the Xanax to start with. Did he grab them from the various bottles scattered around the bathroom sink? Or did he drag a bar stool over to the kitchen counter, climb up and find an unsecured bottle in one of the cabinets? Either way, it was easy to see why the precocious tyke would scoop some up and pop them in his mouth: In the landfill that passed as the kitchen/family room, there were brightly colored candies strewn everywhere. On the table, still sticky from untold meals past. On the floor, which I didn’t even want to contemplate the last time it had been mopped. In that mess, a couple of pastel-colored anti-anxiety pills could easily pass for candy to a toddler eager to put everything his mouth … and not too particular about where he grabbed it from.

Then Andrea’s husband called from the pediatrician’s office. And that’s when things really got interesting.

Oh, Henry’s ears were fine. But a cursory peek in his mouth, an after thought really on the doctor’s part, had revealed a blister on the roof of his mouth. The doctor’s diagnosis: hand, foot and mouth disease, a fairly contagious virus, common among the under 10-set, that produces fever, skin rash and painful mouth ulcers.

I quickly connected the dots. Henry had hand, foot and mouth (HFMD). He’d played all weekend with Fletcher. Fletcher was exposed. Not to mention the entire nursery school class, which is probably where Henry had picked it up to begin with. I wondered from who … which parent had allowed their ill child to go to school and thus infect everyone else? Fletcher didn’t seem sick. Neither did Henry. A quick check of the Centers for Disease Control web site indicated that it took a few days for the virus to show itself. I wondered if they were incubating. I also wondered how this was going to play in San Diego. My guess was not well. I would have to call my aunt and uncle. It wasn’t fair to bring Typhoid Fletcher into their midst and expose my pregnant cousins without at least a warning. Maybe Stewart would watch him at the hotel while I went to the baby shower.

Meanwhile, Andrea called the nursery school, which immediately initiated the kind of massive clean up not seen since the Exxon Valdez. (Even across the room, I could hear the school director’s shock radiate through Andrea’s cell phone.) I went home to do my own sterilizing. I stripped Fletcher’s bed. Lysoled the air mattress the kids had been jumping on. I gathered up every last plastic toy Henry might have handled and tossed it into the dishwasher and ran it on the “pot scrubber” setting. Later that afternoon, I took Fletcher over to his own pediatrician for an emergency checkup.

This is me, slightly panicked: He’s been exposed to a little boy who’s thought to have hand, foot and mouth disease. We’re leaving in two days for San Diego to go to a baby shower. Will Fletcher get sick? Could he infect others?

There way no way to tell, she said, looking at his hands, feet and beneath his diaper. He didn’t look sick. But if he was going to get sick, he’d probably come down with it right around the time my cousins were unwrapping their baby gifts. And yes, he could be contagious.

Just perfect.

I called my aunt and uncle. No need to panic. It’s probably nothing. Just a precaution… And I proceeded to fill them in.

After a quick pow wow, they phoned back: Don’t come! Not to the shower. Not to the house. Not to the city. Don’t even cross the state line.

Hell, I could tell they didn’t even want to be talking with me on the phone. I could practically hear the snap of blue protective latex gloves going on as we talked. God forbid the girls carrying their grandchildren might be exposed. Maybe it was overkill. Then again, who was I to argue? We didn’t attend Rachel’s Mexico wedding because I worried Fletcher would pick up some rare disease simply from breathing the air. (To my Mexican readers, that’s not intended as a slight on your fine country … just the ridiculously overly cautious precautions of a germ-phobic mom.)

I cancelled our trip.

Over the next few days, I religiously checked Fletcher’s hands, feet, around his diaper area, several times a day. Nothing. Not one little pustule erupts. For which I am alternately relieved, thankful … and, after it becomes clear that he does not have HFMD, profoundly pissed off.

Andrea calls me the following week. “I hate to tell you this — ”

Well, like Fletcher, Henry never developed any other HFMD symptoms. That’s because Henry never had hand, foot and mouth disease. That telltale blister on the roof of his mouth? The one that caused the pediatrician to leap off the deep end and call out the HazMat team? Once the shock of the diagnosis wore off, Andrea remembered that Henry had had pizza the night before his doctor’s visit. Hot pizza. Hot pizza that had burned the roof of his mouth. It was the kind of inconsequential detail that Andrea would have remembered if she’d been in the doctor’s office that horrible, chaotic morning instead of Henry’s dad. But she wasn’t because she was watching NGP’s newborn because NGP was in the ER with her three-year-old who’d eaten Xanax.

That’s right. And what of the Xanax Kid … the one who kicked off all this chaos? He’s … fine. He was under observation for a bit at the ER. NGP got a stern lecture about leaving controlled substances laying all over her house. And they were sent home. For which I am relieved, thankful and profoundly pissed off. When you think about it, the whole thing played out a bit like It’s a Wonderful Life — only in reverse. We are all connected in a Capra-esque, Facebook kind of way, and one person’s bone-headed mishap will ripple out to wreak havoc on many other people’s lives.

Of course, one moral of the story could be Don’t send a Dad to do a Mom’s job at the pediatrician. A better one: Keep a tighter lid on the Xanax.

*Names have all been changed to protect … everybody.