Fifths Disease

[hou2b]

Today I found out that one of my students has Fifths Disease! I called my dr. as soon as possible, because I knew that it could affect pregnant women, and the nurse was very reasuring, telling me the chances were slim of complications, but that they would do blood work to test for it. I was actually exposed last week, so I have to do the blood work sometime this week or the beginning of next week. Hopefully I had it as a child, so I would be immune to it.

The secretary staff at the school were kind of rude to me about it, saying that adults can't get Fifths Disease, and I was like, "well the dr. seems to be concerned enough to want to do blood test."

Does anyone have experience with this?

[Willowrose]

I'm sorry I have no experience with this, but you will be in my thoughts. Is there a window of time where you would no longer be at risk for it? What are the complications with it?

[hou2b]

From what I have found out so far is that there is a slim chance of anything happening. Most people get Fifths disease as a child and don't know it. By doing the blood work they will just see if I'm immune or not. At an early pregnancy there could be a small chance of the baby getting anemia, and an even smaller chance of a miscarriage. After I wrote this message, I saw another student beginning a rash, and it looks as if they are in the beginning stages of it. So that's 2 students in my class, I hope it doesn't start spreading, I have several parents of kids in my class that are pregnant as well.