Do you know what I think of when I look at this picture? I think, "Ah yes, the year of the head fungus!" Yep. Great thing to think back on when looking at my son's kindergarten picture 🙄
Colton had ringworm on his scalp, which is known as Tinea Capitis.
He started getting a purple-ish blue-ish oval spot on his head. Then he started balding where the spot was. There were also scales of skin coming off just from that area.
Honestly, I thought it was just a bruise. I didn't do anything about it for several weeks. He had bumped his head on the counter, so I figured it was from that. But when it started getting worse instead of better, I decided to get his head checked out. I was worried that he was maybe bleeding under his skull or something (thank you Google, for helping me find the worse case scenario. Come on, we all go to Google for our medical questions!)
We got to the doctor's and I explained that he had bumped his head, and that this bruise wasn't getting better. The doctor examined the area and was immediately able to tell me that it was a fungus.
You know that I immediately got my hand sanitizer.... Ew.
Unfortunately, it had spread into his hair follicles, so doing anything topical to treat it wouldn't work. No, instead he was prescribed this absolutely horrible medicine called Griseofulvin.
I will tell you right now that if you have to get this medicine for your kid (which I truly wish you don't), have the pharmacist flavor the bottles. Yes, bottles. Big bottles of medicine. Why do you get several bottles of medicine? Because your kid will have to take it for 30 days.
Colton had to take 15 mL for 30 days in order for that dang fungus to die. Getting him to take it was NOT easy.
Before I knew to flavor it, we tried mixing it with different things to get him to drink it. Chocolate milk, scoops of sugar added to the chocolate milk, pure chocolate syrup, yogurt, and juice. Nope, he wouldn't drink it.
We tried the whole hold him down and force it down his throat thing, but he somehow held it in his throat and spit it out after.....
I called the doctor's office to ask if there was any other possible medicine he could take. While I was waiting for a callback, I called the pharmacy to see if they knew of anything. That is when they said they could try flavoring it. I hung up the phone and immediately went over there.
Now, the flavoring made it a tiny bit better. But 15 mL was a lot for Colton to take in one sitting. So we tried splitting up the doses throughout the day. 5 mL in the morning, 5 at lunch and 5 at dinner.
Eventually we got him to do 7.5 mL at lunch and another 7.5 mL at dinner. But here is what we had to do to get him to actually drink the stuff:
I poured the medicine into a cup. I put it next to his plate with some water. Then I got a little Hershey's Nugget, unwrapped it for him and set it next to the water. Then the whole family had to sit at the table and chant "Colton chug! Colton chug!" as he downed the medicine. As he got closer to finishing it we chanted that faster and faster! After he had finished the medicine he immediately would shove the chocolate nugget in and we all would clap and cheer.
Ridiculous, right? But I was seriously desperate. I was willing to do anything to get him to take that medicine. That was the only way his head was going to get better!
At the time, I had been told that the Griseofulvin was the only option of medicine that would get rid of it. I have no idea if that has changed today as you are reading this. But I truly hope that there is a more kid friendly medicine for this type of fungus.
Tinea Capitis is very contagious, and it is an absolute miracle that no one else in our house got it. Maybe it's because we were already using dandruff shampoo? Who knows?
I had to wash his sheets everyday. His head would shed in that one spot and there would be little hairs with scales on the bottom of them all over his bed. I felt like I was constantly vacuuming and spraying Lysol Disinfectant Spray. It took me a minute to find a cleaner that killed ringworm fungus.
In the end, his head got better and we haven't had any fungus growth since. His hair has grown back and he isn't shedding scales anymore. If you have a kid dealing with this, or if you are dealing with it yourself, just know that it does eventually get better!
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