Have you ever been slapped in the face by a virus? I don’t recall ever having parvovirus b19 lay a finger dna strand on my face as a kid, but apparently it’s a common infection.

Earlier last week, our little girl had a few minor signs of a runny nose and unexplained crankiness which I think might be from a headache. At the end of the week, she was developing a little rash on her body and some on her cheeks.

The next day, that little rash exploded all over her body, was warm to the touch, and left our poor toddler with an extremely red and swollen face as if she had been slapped hard on both cheeks.

As it turns out, this is called slapped-cheek disease aka fifth disease, which is said to be quite common in kids. Seeing my daughter covered in a bright red rash is bad enough, but her swollen hamster-like cheeks simply hurt my heart. Every time I look at the picture above, I feel that sunken feeling in my heart and stomach wishing I could make it all go away.

I’m usually the good one at maintaining composure when our child is sick, so you can only imagine how distraught my wife was all weekend. She was filled with constant concern and made sure to keep Avery happy as much as possible. Despite her ailments, Avery was her happy toddler self running around yapping about certain anatomy along with singing the intro to Little Einsteins at the top of her lungs. Kinda like this pic, but with a rash and swollen face.

She was scratching the rash, but Going Mom and was good about keeping her mind occupied with lots of reading and playing.

Cousin Ashlee also spent the night and they had a blast playing together, so that helped tremendously!

All weekend long, the symptoms of the virus plagued our sweet girl. We were more concerned about the infection and mild fever than she was, but it sucked nonetheless. As I write this, we are on day 3 since the rash appeared and slapped her face, and I’m happy to say it’s slowly going away. Her swollen face is slowly returning to normal and the rash, while still all around her arms, legs, and back, has lessened.

With fifth disease, there really is no treatment other than letting it run its course. We’re doing just that and are thankful it hasn’t dampened her spirits one bit.

Have you, your kids, or someone you know ever had fifth disease?

Did you see lots of swelling in the face too?