Why Must They Suffer?

14 months & 2 days old.....

They….I mean the children. Children getting sick are very common, as we all know it. Flu, fever, ear infection, chicken pox, measles, HFMD and what not. But when they get sick back to back, it’s really heart breaking and frustrating. I’m only talking about the minor sickness, not some chronic diseases. Those are unbearable, to me.

Barely one week after recovering from HFMD, Ethan was down again with viral fever and was hospitalised for two nights. He started to have fever on Thursday (19 July 2007) evening. Given him medication before sleep and a suppository at around 6 a.m. He was ok on Friday but when I picked him up in the evening, his body was quite warm. His temperature was between 38.3 and 38.5 C. I continued to give him medication. On Saturday afternoon, his temperature rose up to 38.7 and I quickly gave him another supp.

Thinking and hoping that it was due to teething, we just monitored his condition. But things took a bad turn on Sunday. The day he supposed to be celebrating his 14 months. He started to have diarrhea and the fever came back. Another supp went in at 6.30 p.m. and we decided to bring him to the hospital. We reached there around 9.30 p.m. The nurse at the registration counter took down some details and she made a remark “4 days of fever and you never bring him to any doctor?” Yeah, well…..I just swallowed the comment. The doctor suggested a blood test and admission for monitoring. It was something which I have expected. Even if we go home, we will send him back in the midnight should the fever come back. What worried me most was that he just recovered from HFMD.

We waited for the paed. to check on him and do the blood test at the A&E ward before we were brought to the paediatric ward. When Ethan first saw the paed., he was smiling at him but once the doctor put the stethoscope on his chest, he started to cry and wail. The paed. left us for a while and prepared for a blood test. The moment Ethan saw him again, he started to wail and cried “AH NEHHH! AH NEHHH! AH NEHHH!” non-stop. I think the old man on the next bed, who was having breathing difficulty could have been brought back to life by Ethan's cry. His heavy breathing went back to normal after that. His cry was so loud that the whole A&E ward could hear him. He was tied down with a blanket and I was holding him down when the doctor took the 5ml blood. After the admission procedure, we were brought to the ward at around 11.30 p.m. and Ethan finally fell asleep at pass midnight.

I slept with him on a bed while hubby went home. Ethan was put on drip and the nurses came in to check his temperature every 2 hours. So, I practically woke up every 2 hours, plus a few times in between because the bed was so small and Ethan is so used to his queen-size mattress. Every time he turned I will wake up and the tube for the drip is also very disturbing. It leaked a few times and finally came off in the morning. He had fever again around 5 a.m. and was given another supp. I decided to wake up at 5.30 a.m. and sms hubby asking him to take the day off. Before long, Ethan poop again. I changed him and called up hubby. He decided to take the day off.

We switched him to lactose free milk and the diarrhea stop. But then, after taking the milk for a few times, Ethan refused to take it anymore. So, we gave him his normal milk but the diarrhea came back. We have no choice but to mix the milk powder. I know we are not supposed to mix different milk formula in one feed but what choice do we have? Thank goodness, he’s ok with it so far.

To cut the long story short, the paed. allowed Ethan to be discharged on Tuesday after he was cleared of fever and his condition was stable. It was very uncomfortable in the hospital. We cannot put Ethan down to play or crawl. Not even in the play room because he still like to put things into his mouth. We had to carry him all the time walking up and down aimlessly at the ward. By the way, the bill came up to more than RM 2K. Luckily, it was covered by the insurance.