Hand Foot Mouth Survival Tips for Adults
Hand-foot-and-mouth disease recently ripped through our household. Our two-year-old toddler who goes to daycare was patient zero (surprise surprise to absolutely no one).
For those who have been through this trying time… you already know how shitty it can be.
For those who have yet to encounter this virus… this post is for you.
Please note: I am not a doctor, and this is not medical advice. You should always consult a physician or pediatrician (etcetera) if you think you might have caught literally anything and before trying any remedies. These are just my personal experiences as a current toddler mom.
Also, please note that this post contains affiliate links. If you click through and make a purchase, I may earn a small commission at no additional cost to you. Either way, I only recommend products I genuinely use or believe in - this is a no BS zone.
HFMD or HFM (the universally accepted short hands for Hand-foot-and-mouth disease) is fucking awful. Expect life to be an absolute shit show and be prepared to deal with some ramifications at least a few months down the line(!) if anyone gets it bad.
Before we get into the fun part, let’s start at the beginning…
What exactly is Hand-foot-mouth?
A “mild illness” young children get that causes blister-like sores in the mouth and a rash on the hands and feet. It is most commonly caused by the coxsackievirus.
The medically accepted definitions make it seem like a relative cake walk compared to “bad illnesses”... except for the fact that your hands, feet, mouth, throat, and potentially other parts of your body can suddenly sprout literal, uber painful-to-the-touch blisters and as an added bonus it just happens to be incredibly contagious (often even before you know you have it).
Mayo Clinic gives a reasonably detailed definition here.
Cleveland Clinic gives a more specific account of what happens after you’ve actually caught it here.
Reddit users, however, paint a more colorful picture than their medical field brethren, which, after my own personal experience of catching it the worst out my entire family, I can confirm the truth in the following solid, now-hilarious-but-not-at-the-time descriptors: “the worst illness in my short year of being a parent,” “the fuckin devil’s disease,” and “a virus straight from the devils butthole”.
The most important thing to keep in mind for the purposes of this post?
Adults seems to catch Hand-foot-and-mouth way more frequently than the medical professionals make it seem.
This one fact is clutch to this post because while I believe this to be true just based on the sheer number of people in my circle and that I’ve been able to uncover in kids’ chat forums, there is literally no reliable medical advice to be seen on the internet that is not in a Reddit thread that details remedies for adults with Hand-foot-mouth. I felt like I was straight up shit’s creek during the thick of HFMD in my house a few weeks ago and I’m honestly hoping some of this helps someone else who’s in the thick of it in some small way.
How will I know if my child has Hand foot mouth?
This is the fun part… you likely won’t know until after they’ve been contagious for a few days!(!!)
Hand-foot-mouth is most contagious during the first few days of being sick, especially when a fever is present… aka before any of the rashes, blisters, or bumps appear.
Toddler parents know that fevers are a dime a dozen during this era of life, and can be due to everything from serious illness, garden variety colds, and even sometimes just when baby teeth are emerging. Fevers don’t really trigger anything on the radar but all of a sudden when you see something that shouldn’t be there - like the telltale red dots on their tiny hands or feet - red flags start waiving and alarm bells go off that this is more than you once thought it to be.
This means that every time, for literal days before it’s obvious your child has Hand foot mouth, you’ve likely shared food, given kisses, been mouth-breathed on before bedtime, and even been the recipient of some in-your-face sneezes. Thus, greatly increasing your risk for catching “the devil’s disease” (thinking I might keep this descriptor as my #1… ).
You’ll know for sure your kids have it when after a day or so of (potentially low hundreds) fever, it breaks and out come these very small, very innocuous looking red bumps on your kid’s hands, feet, and/or the corners of their mouth.
Looking back in hindsight, you’ll probably also remember all those times over the last 48 hours that they’ve refused foods or beverages that they typically always eat, now realizing that they probably didn’t want anything because eating or drinking anything feels like swallowing razor blades with HFMD.
What happens to me if I catch Hand foot mouth as an adult?
God speed. If you’re lucky, you’ll get a fever and scratchy throat for 24 hours and then the virus will call it a day.
If you’re unlucky, like moi, you will be absolutely miserable for 7ish days and still be dealing with the consequences weeks later.
Believe when I say “absolutely miserable” that I am not exaggerating. My hands were so complete covered in unbelievably painful blisters that I literally woke up in the middle of the night (and couldn’t get back to sleep even after three Advil!) because of it.
Everyday (when I finally slept) I woke up hoping for the best, but ended up with more of those fucking blisters sprouting out of nowhere.
I tried everything to 1) dry up those fuckers and 2) make them not feel like shit anymore. Yes, you’ve probably heard that you “just have to let the virus run its course,” but honestly that felt like complete horseshit in the moment and I am not the type to sit back and do nothing, especially if there is something that might help relieve the symptoms.
What are some home remedies for adults who catch Hand foot mouth?
Epsom salt soaks
Epsom salt is believed to have a number of health benefits (with some scientific but a lot of anecdotal backing) when used externally that range from reducing inflammation, pain relief, skin hydration, and toxin extraction from the body.
If even one of those benefits is scientifically accurate, I myself figured it was worth a try and used something very similar to Sky Organics’ 100% pure Epsom Salt made for bath soaking.
While I’m not here to report 100% success, I do believe that soaking my blistered hands and feet in a warm Epsom salt bath for 3-4 times a day helped the blisters to soften, become more comfortable overall, and more receptive to other skin treatments that significantly improved the terrible feelings.
Also, if you have HFMD bad you’re likely going to want to keep up your skin hydration regime as every single blistered surface eventually dries up and begins to peel away from the rest of your non-affected skin.
Dousing affected area with Lidocaine
Lidocaine is a numbing agent (read: anesthetic), intended to be used externally only, that reduces pain by suspending the nerve signals that make it to your brain from those areas.
If you have raised blisters that feel like piercing pains every time your skin pulls or you put a little pressure on your foot or god forbid you grab something, then this might help you too.
I purchased this bad boy on Amazon - Bactine MAX Cleansing Spray with 4% Lidocaine - and it was a game changer in the comfort category. Instructions said to spray the affected area only a handful of times a day, but I admittedly doused tf out of my hands to the point where the felt permanently layered in stickiness but also gave ~50% pain reduction in that area overall (more than even Advil or Tylenol did!).
This particular Bactine spray has the maximum amount of Lidocaine allowed for OTC topicals, so if you try it and don’t feel any relief it’s for sure asking your doc if you can be prescribed something stronger.
Drinking warm ginger tea
Drinking water felt like drinking shards of glass and drinking anything hot felt like I was excising the majority of the inner layers of my esophagus.
Anything warm, however, felt soothing and gave a small break to the absolute disaster area that was my throat.
Ginger in general is known for its ability to reduce inflammation. The dried tea form, like these organic, nothing-else-added-but-ginger Ginger Tea Bags by Handpick is no different.
Drinking warm ginger tea then serves a dual purpose: giving you a means to hydrate when everything else feels like dog shit, and helping to calm the in-throat situation.
Eating ice pops and soup
The internet is divided on whether something hot or something cold feels better if you have Hand foot mouth. During my short stint with the virus, I found both to be helpful throughout the day.
Ice pops like these delicious, organic SuperFruit Freezie Pops by DeeBee’s, which are both delicious and completely avoid added sugar, were a big hit by me and my son alike. It was also some of the only liquid I was comfortably able to take it on some days.
Warm soup provides the same soothing properties that drinking warm tea offers with the added bonus of actually getting some nutrients in you when you’re considering a full on hunger strike.
My top rec for food or drink while fighting this super fun virus is to avoid added sugar, or sugar of any kind really. I’m not sure I can do justice to the feelings in my throat after attempting to consume sugar, but suffice it to say it was evident right away that sugar (including fresh fruit) was making this much worse instead of better.
Using an obscene amount of moisturizer and sleeping gloves
As your blisters start to heal, and you’re no longer in full lidocaine-dousing mode, you will need to start moisturizing like your life depends on it.
Let me elaborate - after the blisters dry up and are no longer super painful to the touch, they will not just fade off into the sunset and pretend like they were never there. Instead you will progress into what I lovingly call the drying, peeling, and molting phase, where every single blister spot on your hands will result in several layers of dead skin, that over the course of the next few weeks will start to flake off (best case) or peel off (worse case).
The absolute worst part of this is when your fingertips start peeling from where your nail beds start, resulting in what I can only describe as the sensation you are wearing slippery plastic gloves, except the “gloves” are literally no-longer-attached layers of your own skin gliding over very raw, not-yet-ready-for-the-world new skin.
To minimize discomfort throughout this process and to keep the new smooth-as-a-baby’s-butt skin hydrated, I cannot recommend enough a dermatologist approved, emollient-enriched moisturizer like the Eucerin Unscented Original Healing Cream.
Highly recommend using liberally throughout the day, but also coating your hands with this stuff before bed and slipping on some cotton gloves made for nighttime moisturizing to keep your skin as happy and hydrated as possible.
The cotton gloves also offer the bonus of giving you an added layer of protection while in the blister phase too.
Sleeping, for example, is the absolute worst when your hands are so covered in blisters that you literally wake up in the middle of the night with your hands throbbing in excruciating pain. (Especially if you’re like me and are anything but a stationary sleeper.)
Bottom line, if you’re an adult that catches Hand foot mouth from one of the littles in your life, brace yourself for the worst, but hope you’re just one of those lucky ones that ran into the same strain of virus as a kid and it’s nothing more than a single-day flu.
Have questions? Want to learn more I-caught-something-crazy-from-my-toddler toddler illness survival tips and general tidbits?
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