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Home › Articles › General › Kawasaki Disease

Kawasaki Disease

How Much do You Know About This Infectious Illness?

By Jenn Director Knudsen

Pages:  1  2  3  4  5  6  

Once home, Alyssa had to take an entire week off from all activity just to keep her heart as untaxed as possible. She followed a regimen of several baby aspirin a day that quickly tapered to a single pill (81 mg), once a day for three months. And this spring she'll have a third and final visit to the pediatric cardiologist to ensure that her heart suffered no lasting damage from the insidious disease.

Kawasaki disease recurs in about 20 percent of its victims. Thankfully, Alyssa, like Willie, is in the camp of the other 80 percent for whom the single-dose IVIG and aspirin therapy work.

Delectable Digit Reappears
Alyssa started school in mid-September, a week later than her fellow kindergarteners, and quickly was back at her old activities and to her own, energetic, treats-loving self.

Eventually, some of her finger and toenails peeled off along with her digits' skin. The left thumb, already supple from five solids years of being sucked, also lost its top layer of skin, nail included. As fall turned into winter, Alyssa's molting skin was no more. New skin had regenerated, as had interest in that scrumptious left thumb.

Everyone who knew Alyssa well had noted in September that she'd stopped sucking her thumb. By Thanksgiving, those same folks noticed – with alarm – her renewed thumb-sucking vigor.

I didn't care. To me, Alyssa sucking her beloved thumb indicated a full recovery. Guess that potentially killer infection didn't eradicate her thumb-sucking habit after all.

Kawasaki Disease Resources

For more information about Kawasaki disease, Anne Rowley, a pediatric infectious disease specialist with Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago, Ill., recommends the following Web sites:

  • Children's Memorial Hospital (www.childrensmemorial.org/depts/infectious/kawasaki.asp)
  • Kawasaki Disease Foundation (http://kdfoundation.org)


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