What the Hand Foot Mouth Disease cost us

The Hand Foot Mouth Disease (HFMD) saga has been particularly hot recently, especially with the outbreak in Malaysia caused by a new strain, deaths involved, and also closer to home, we are seeing increasing number of cases reported.

Especially for households with young kids, that probably caused a lot more concern.

Like ours.

And it is especially so during this period, schools are on high alert, and are especially cautious of admitting students that display HFMD symptoms, including red spots, blisters, rashes on hands and feet, mouth ulcer, fever, etc. For more information on the symptoms, please refer to this link.

Anyways, as parents with a pre-schooler and a 9-month old baby, such outbreaks would definitely grab our attention, although for our household, we namely take it with a pinch of salt and absorb the information for our awareness.

After all, there’s very little that you can do.

I mean yes, we could try to prevent it by practising good hygiene habits for starters, and we also teach Ally to wash her hands regularly etc. But the thing with such contagious diseases is that, they tend to spread. And it is hard to escape from them.

And then it hit us.

Although not in the technical sense.

Last month, Ally was sent home twice, because on both occasions, her pre-school suspected that she had HFMD while doing a physical examination.

We had to bring her to a doctor to certify that she has no HFMD before we could send her back to school.

And on both occasions, the doctor certified that she was well and fit for school. She did not have HFMD.

Although it was a sigh of relief for us, nevertheless, we still had to pay for the doctor’s consultation.

August cost outlay for both consultations: $20 X 2 = $40

While we thought the saga was over, two weeks ago, after returning from daycare one day, I noted that she had red and itchy patches on her hands and feet. She was scratching herself all over the place.

Within the next two days, they developed into many tiny bumps, and it spread to a larger area.

However, she did not develop any other symptoms. The rashes were not found on the palms and soles, she had no mouth ulcer nor fever, her appetite was exceptionally good – in other words, she was highly functional, except for the itch and rash.

We had applied some moisturizer and ointment on her, hoping that it would help. It did for a while but the itching never quite went away.

It was only a few days later that we decided to bring her to see a doctor.

It was a Sunday and most of the clinics were closed. We brought her to see a doctor at Waterway Point, which fortunately, was opened.

Upon physical examination, the GP had diagnosed her with HFMD!

So you can imagine the horror when we were told that, especially since we did not quarantine her from Ashton, and the two siblings were always within close distance from each other most of the time.

The GP gave her a week off from school and prescribed some oral medication. As for the rashes, he suggested that we could probably just continue using our normal moisturiser.

According to him, the redness should go away in the next few days.

To be honest, Dave and I did have our suspicions initially, especially since the rashes were all congregated around the hands and feet (though none at the soles). The diagnosis by the doctor confirmed our suspicions. Also, we figured that since this doctor is probably one of the few GPs in Singapore that has seen the most number of HFMD in Singapore (since his clinic is located at some of the most seriously hit clusters in Singapore), we should not second-guess his diagnosis.

We continue to monitor Ally’s condition another day or two after that and despite taking the oral medication and continuing the moisturising treatment on her,  the itch never quite went away. The GP did not prescribe her any cream so we only continued using the moisturiser, which unfortunately, did not help much.

And the more we looked at it, the more it did not feel like HFMD.

In addition, the grandparents on both ends also thought that it was simply childhood eczema, which according to my mum, also inflicted me at some point when I was a kid.

That was when we decided to sought a second opinion.

We brought her to a pediatrician.

The pediatrician took a while to examine her.

After which, she exclaimed that it was most probably not HFMD but hand and feet eczema, which unfortunately, were congregated at areas which would led most to think that it could be HFMD.

At that moment, all our doubts dissipated.

Here’s a little known fact. A doctor can often diagnose HFMD simply by performing a physical exam. They will also check the mouth and body for the appearance of blisters and rashes. The doctor will also ask you or your child about other symptoms. However, to be sure that whatever is hitting you is HFMD, you need to run a diagnostic test – which is probably a throat swab or stool sample that can be tested for the virus.

As such, the pediatrician could not confirm that she did not have the virus, and suggested that she stayed at home for the week. If she did have HFMD, the rashes would disappear in a few days. If it is a case of eczema flare up (which according to her should be the case for Ally), it will take longer, but we can manage it with a medical grade cream that she will prescribed her.

With the newly prescribed cream, I religiously applied it on Ally and true enough, within a few days, the itch started to go away, and the redness faded.

Before she went back to school, we had to bring her to a doctor (just a regular GP) to certify that she was fit for school. During then the eczema was starting to disappear and he agreed that she had a bad case of eczema and is fit for school, no HFMD.

With that, this is what the  September saga cost us: 

Cost of visiting the GP (including medicine even though it was a misdiagnosis) – $55

Cost of visiting the Pediatrician (including the creams) – $155

Cost of visiting the GP for certification (fit for school) – $30

Total cost in September – $240

The medical cost is just one item to think about.

If you think about the classes that she missed in daycare and add them up, that is a whole load more. During this period, she misses a week of classes. That is about a quarter of the cost of her school fees, which comes up to approximately another $210.

So all in all, this entire fake HFMD saga cost us almost $500. 

(I am not going into details about why we would choose to go to different GPs or a pediatrician for a second opinion nor why we did not choose to go to a polyclinic for lower cost but there were various reasons behind that.) 

Hence, it is with much relieve that researchers are looking at developing a kit that could potentially test HFMD before symptoms appear. And this, would provide a better accuracy than a physical examination, which sometimes could easily mask other conditions when on the outset, it simply looked like HFMD.

In addition, it would also prevent a lot of the saga where parents needed to bring their child to the doctor for certification to be fit for school when they display some symptoms similar to HFMD, even though upon closer examination by the doctor, is not the case.

I do not blame the daycare centres for being a bit too rigid in their screening process. After all, they are doing so for the well-being of our children, and it is understandable that in such critical times, they are on red alert for any potential infections.

But one thing we learnt for sure, if in doubt, explore the option of seeking a second opinion.

Which was what we did.

And we were glad we did.

Even though that was the largest medical outlay, the creams did help.

And it spared us the agony and trouble of having to quarantine two kids.

But all in all, the entire saga did cost a lot of money no doubt.