I had never heard of Kawasaki disease until a relative came down with it. It happens to be a very rare disease that affects very young children. It actually does not occur very often in children from the United States, but does happen. Some of the symptoms are very bad swelling, fever, and rash. As you know these symptoms can also be related to a number of other conditions. It will be up to the doctor to decide if your child actually has this illness. They will usually draw this conclusion by making sure that there is no other possible diagnosis. This will mean that your child will have to undergo numerous blood tests and a variety of other tests. One of the major concerns with this disease is aneurisms around or near the heart. This is all according to what the doctor told us. It is actually a very scary thing to see. They also informed us that there is not clear test that will diagnose this disease, so there is always the possibility that your child could have something else.
After the doctors checked and ran all of the tests they could possibly run they did determine that it was Kawasaki disease. There really is no guaranteed treatment. One thing that they will give your child is Aspirin. This is supposed to help with the fever, and keep the blood from clotting. They also usually give them another treatment which could involve some type of blood plasma. Your doctor will explain all of the options to you before they begin treatment. They one thing that I do remember them telling us is that these are only precautionary treatments. Basically it will not get rid of the disease but it will help to keep it from becoming a more serious condition. Basically we were being told that we had to wait it out, and let the illness take its cause. They say that this could mean that your child will have to remain in the hospital for several weeks or even a month.
Even then they will still have to visit their doctor once a month to have them checked for any type of heart complications. Another puzzling thing about this disease is that they really don’t know what the cause is. The one good thing about it I guess is the fact that it is not contagious so if you have more than one child you don’t have to worry about any of the others getting it. It is still very hard to watch your child be so uncomfortable especially when they are under the age of two. They say that this particular disease does affect most children who are under the age of two. For additional information you can do an online search. Google would definitely be a great place to start concerning this rare disease. If your child has nay of the symptoms that were mentioned above you should take them to the doctor immediately. Don’t wait, because time can be very precise when it comes to Kawasaki disease.
