Burning Ring of Fire

In the wake of the aforementioned poop problems of the last few weeks it shouldn't have come as a surprise that our little girl was gonna get a bum rash. Yet, we were a bit surprised, and then horrified when the rash, in the space of a day, became an angry swollen red patch of pain for our tender little girl.

This is a stand-in rash similar to Rowan's awful affliction. Rowan's naughty bits shall remain outside public purvue for the foreseeable future.

 We had never seen a rash that bad on Rowan and it broke our hearts every time we had to change a diaper. It was worst around her naughty bits and when I would go to wipe with a cloth she would scream - flat out scream - in pain. What started as a regular, but bad, rash got worse when these little pimple-like bump appeared.

It was then that my built-in problem solver got off his lazy ass and went to work. It's worth noting that in the time Bob and I have been together I've successfully diagnosed at least three different medical issues, including MS, that entire teams of PH-f'ing-D's haven't figured out, so I'm pretty confident in my research skills. At any rate, I went to work and in a short time managed to figure out the problem: my 14 month old child had a yeast infection!!

What the ****!! A yeast infection?!?! That wasn't in the manual!

Ok then, we had the cause, now to find a treatment. I should clarify that I have no problem taking Rowan to the doctor, but in my point of view you should make an effort to fix the problem at home before increasing the burden on our already over-wrought health-care system.

After digging round the web I found consensus on some remedies that worked, and a decent formulation from Dr. Sears that involved mixing anti-fungal cream, lanolin and zinc oxide. The concoction worked like a charm! Within the first day we began to see a difference, by the third day it was a regular rash, and now, a week later, she's cured.

Air drying the affected area.

The whole situation sucked. I can't imagine what the poor little Rowan went through, and I hope none of us have to go through anything like this again. I mean, I love Johnny Cash, but no one really likes a ring of fire on their naughty bits...