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The day before Thanksgiving, I had just settled in with my coffee and my newspaper when my husband summoned me. "Look at this." Nicholas had awakened, covered in red spots. As an older mom with a sensible outlook I pride myself on handling crises with aplomb. So I did what any smart, sophisticated woman of the new millenium would do: I called my Mommy. "What do measles look like?" We'd never had the measles, but my mom, a retired schoolteacher, had seen plenty of cases. She arrived in, oh, maybe 2.25 seconds. In her opinion, it wasn't the measles, but it needed checking.

I made an appointment with the on-call pediatrician and tried to remain calm. Made the mistake of looking online. Of course, what Nicholas had looked like every nefarious illness I could see. The thing is, he wasn't miserable. Far from it - he was acting like a normal kid, just blotchier.

Finally, we got him to the doctor, who diagnosed - an allergy. With no fever or itching, it wasn't likely a virus. And it wasn't measles or chickenpox. She prescribed Benadryl and said to call if it got worse or Nicholas developed a fever. We haven't figured out what, exactly, he was allergic to - with a recent trip to Disneyland, it could have been anything. A couple of days later, his skin was clear and his mom was off the ledge of panic.

I knew it was nothing all along.