Two weeks ago on Friday, I noticed that my little girl had a weird looking rash on her feet. It was weird enough to take notice, but I didn’t think much of it as little kids get rashes all the time and because ever since it’s been nice outside, she insists on going barefoot whenever she can.
The next day when she started getting a fever, I started to get a little worried – were they connected? She ran a high fever for 2 days but then it broke and that was it. But the rash got worse. By that next Thursday/Friday the rash was horrible looking. It was reddish purplish, puffy and yet hard and when you pressed into her feet and ran your hands down, you could feel little bumps. It looked like she had an infection coming from inside her feet. It was also Thursday night that she started itching them for the first time.
I had been concerned about the rash being something that somebody else could catch and since we were at Antioch convention by that time around a few hundred people, I was worried about that… But, neither Wade or I got it or anybody else that she would have been around a lot, her relatives or our daycare providers kids. Nobody had anything.
On Friday, she started getting bumps on the tops of her feet and her hands, but it didn’t look like the same rash.. this one looked a little more like HF&M and didn’t look near as bad, but I had to figure they were related.
The other thing that confused me was that her feet were red.. more red than usual and they always felt hot to the touch. Even when she was cold. Wade & I decided that if it got ANY worse, we'd just take her into the first Dr. we could find. (We were in NE, not up here where we live)
Finally we were able to get in to our Dr. yesterday. (Thursday, just about 2 weeks after it started) She was just as confused as we were. She ruled out Hand, foot & mouth, chicken pox, Lyme disease, (We had pulled 2 ticks off her a week before the rash) athletes foot and you name it. She had no better clue about it than we did. She wrote down the whole timeline of the ticks, rash, fever, when it got worse, when it started itching, etc. and promised to do some research and call us back. She called us in the evening saying she had found nothing and that if it came back or got worse, she’d send her to the dermatologist.
Then I posted about the Dr.’s visit on facebook and I got this response from a friend:
“You said it started on her feet right? It may be the shoes she was wearing. There is a few Mom's in Oklahoma who complained about the same symptoms after their girls wore shoes that were manufactured in china. There were a few news stories about last week, something about the chemicals in the insides of the shoes. You may check into that. I know the shoes were from Wal-Mart, Payless and Costco.”
Right away it clicked. We had bought Jessi a new pair of shoes from Wal-Mart about 1-2 weeks before the rash showed up. They were a cute pair of tenne/mary jane style shoes that looked like they’d be nice summer time play shoes. She wore them all the time. It just made so much sense to me, mainly because it was the ONLY thing that anybody had come up with that made sense.
She never said anything about the brand at first, but then she made another comment with it… Danskin brand shoes from Wal-mart… Those were them!!
The article about it is here:
STORY
Not only that, but this isn’t the first time it’s happened with wal-mart and shoes from China:
HERE
The picture they have on that first news story of the shoes, those are the exact same shoes as we got for Jessi.
Now you all know how I am about chemicals. But honestly, I NEVER thought about worrying about the shoes she wears. It really really stinks because I would LOVE to buy my daughter nice shoes that AREN’T made in China, but lets be real. For a little kid who outgrows her shoes in 6 months, I just can’t afford that.
So yeah, the “rash” she had that I spent so much time worrying about and trying to find out what was, wasn’t a rash at all. Her poor little feet were BURNED.
How much would I love to boycott China?? A LOT! It’s pretty much impossible. And now every single time I buy her a pair of shoes, I’m going to worry about it.
I also wish Walmart was a little better, but that’s another story. We NEVER buy from them anymore anyways, it’s just that we happened to have to run in that day & I had been wanting to find her a pair of play shoes that weren’t flip-flops :(
When the rash started:
I very much regret that I didn't get some pictures when it was at it's worst. Take the bad red spots you see in those pictures, and imagine them covering the bottom of her feet, looking purplish, puffy and hard. That's what they looked like.
These were last night: It didn't show up all that well, but you get the picture.
