Hand, foot, and mouth disease strikes city daycare

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This article was published 08/07/2022 (1241 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

An outbreak of hand, foot, and mouth disease at a daycare has prompted a Winnipeg mother to publicly caution other families after a serious infection sent her to the ER.

“I would just want (Manitobans) to know that it can be very serious for other people, even if your experience is not very severe. Even if you think your child is fine after only three days or four days, it’s really important for you to stay home because your child is still infectious. Someone else could have a really negative outcome,” says Erica Bulow.

Upon picking up her four-year-old daughter from a home daycare in Island Lakes on June 30, Bulow was informed another child had attended daycare for three days while infectious with hand, foot, and mouth disease. Symptoms of the viral illness can take three days to a week to show up. They include fever, rash, and blisters — which Bulow saw first-hand when her daughter started getting itchy red spots on July 2.

Despite careful disinfecting and distancing within their household, Bulow and her 10-month-old son also got infected and began to experience more severe symptoms. Her son had a high fever, and Bulow consulted with a pediatrician to care for both of her children, not expecting she would get severely ill herself.

By July 4, her symptoms had progressed to include numbness in her face, fingers, hands and toes. She had difficulty breathing, and the blisters on her feet were so painful she couldn’t walk.

Her husband called an ambulance, and Bulow spent more than seven hours waiting to see the lone ER doctor at St. Boniface hospital. For more than five hours, she was on a stretcher in the hallway hooked up to an oxygen tank while at least nine other patients waited in the hallway and a “continuous flow” of paramedics lined up to off-load ambulance patients.

“At that point, the oxygen tank had run out, but I was able to feel my fingers and toes and jaw again. The doctor said ‘well, we don’t really know what it is, it’s probably just a side-effect of hand, foot and mouth, it might be meningitis,’” Bulow said.

The illness can cause brain swelling and meningitis, but Bulow said the doctor was clearly too busy and was dismissive as a result.

“There wasn’t a lot of concern at the hospital about it. They were just like, ‘Oh, hand, foot mouth is a minor disease, it’s more of a nuisance than anything else.’”

The next day, she and her infant son saw a walk-in clinic doctor who confirmed they had severe infections of the disease.

Bulow was prescribed antibiotics because of a concern the virus had paved the way for a bacterial infection. She and her family are improving now, but Bulow wanted to share her experience to help others.

She said she was told all children at the daycare were infected, as well as all of their siblings. The outbreak has affected multiple families. Bulow is asking for clear public-health communication about hand, foot and mouth disease, including specific quarantine guidance and more information about the potential for people to become sicker if they were previously infected with COVID-19.

Her family contracted COVID-19 in April, also resulting from an infection at her daughter’s daycare.

The Winnipeg Regional Health Authority didn’t respond to a request for comment about the prevalence of hand, foot and mouth disease in Winnipeg this summer.

katie.may@winnipegfreepress.com