not your average bug

This? Is rotavirus. You're thinking ewwwww right now, huh? I don't blame you.

If you've been keeping up with this self-indulgent corner of the blog world, you know that Lemony Villa has not been a fun place to visit, let alone live, for about a month now. There have been doctor's visits and blood tests. PEE IN THE CUP!! visits. Things deposited in Tupperware and cultured visits.

Ewwwwwwww, you say, I don't need to know these things. Believe me, I hear ya.

After much deliberation and consultation with lab-type people, the pediatrician we've been lucky enough to not see much of over the years finally came up with a diagnosis...and there it is, the little bastard, right there for your viewing pleasure. Hey, be grateful you only have to look at it. We've had to live with it, and trust me, it's even uglier when you can't see it because it's hiding in your intenstines.

Shudder.

I did a bit of reading once we had the diagnosis. I wanted to know how we caught it, how I could make the sickest of the sick more comfortable, and how to avoid getting it again. I also wanted to see how other parents coped with this, because when I say this is the sickest I have ever seen my family in fifteen years I'm not kidding, and Mr. Lemony and I were just a wee bit stressed out.

What I learned was staggering. Like this:

The proportion of deaths in children [less than or equal to] 5 years of age attributable to diarrhea demonstrated a declining trend with increasing income level; the median proportion for low-income countries was 21%; for low-middle income countries, 17%; for high-middle income countries, 9%; and for high-income countries, 1%.

And this:

An estimated 1,205 children die from rotavirus disease each day, and 82% of these deaths occur in children in the poorest countries.

So but for a stroke of fate, my kids are in the 1% and not the 21%. Because we have access to clean water, Pedialyte pops, hot running water and chlorine-based disinfectants, not to mention reliable medical care, we get to live to tell the horror story that is rotavirus infection. I am extraordinarily grateful...and extraordinarily sad. Children are dying from what basically amounts to nothing more than a bad case of diarrhea. One-thousand, two-hundred and five of them every day.

Holy hell, man.

I've lived through some pretty unpleasant things in my life. I lost a childhood to drug addiction and a beloved friend to another bastard of a virus. But I have never lost a child to something as simple as diarrhea, and the odds are I never will.

With that in mind I've decided I have to do what I can for the kids who have parents without the odds in their favor. And so, for every comment I get to this post, I will give a dollar, rounding up to the nearest hundred, (one comment per person, please...we're Lemons, not Gates) to PATH and their rotavirus vaccine program. One-thousand, two-hundred and five children a day is just too many.

So. Whadaya say?