HOUSTON – You know how we're always wondering if Facebook is listening to our conversations?
One mom in the Heights, Jamie Boles, is convinced it is and it helped her son’s health issue.
She said she was complaining to a girlfriend about blisters around her son's eye - and poof! - her friend's Facebook newsfeed came up with the diagnosis!
Boles was frantic when she saw the suggested post on Facebook alerting moms to HSV, otherwise known as the cold sore virus or oral herpes, showing up in kids.
Boles immediately called her husband, "Go pick him up! Take him to urgent care!"
She said the urgent care clinic originally thought it could be hand, foot and mouth, but her husband asked "Could it be herpes?"Â
The urgent care sent him to spend the night in the emergency room when they confirmed the suspicion that HSVÂ was infecting his eye.
According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, cold sores are common in almost half of everyone in the U.S., but around the eye, it can lead to blindness.
It's not always known where kids like Boles's come in contact with the virus, but she's begging other parents to be aware of how dangerous it can be to babies.
"Parents with cold sores kissing your babies, you can transmit it to them," Boles said. "On the lips, mouth, it's not any danger but on the eye is when it's really concerning."
You should call your pediatrician if you see these, especially in babies under 6 months old. Not everyone can have Boles's luck...
"I feel like Facebook saved my son's eye because we wouldn't have known and I feel like he might have been misdiagnosed because he didn't have a lot of the typical symptoms other than the blisters," she said.
Other symptoms include:
High fever
one or more blisters
Once a child has cold sores, they don't ever go away so the Boles family had to come up with a plan with their pediatrician, in case it shows up again around the eye.