Why I was way away? One thing that will always keep me from posting is Hassan. On his first week to nursery he had a cold and on Thursday he didn’t go but I noticed he was showing symptoms on Wednesday noon time. His cold lasted a few days, about 4 days long. Then all symptoms were gone so I sent him back to nursery the following week. He only attended two days then started having a runny nose again and the next day he got a fever upto 38.5. I took Tuesday off to take him to hospital, though I ended having 3 days off.  Anyways he was prescribed Augmentin because this time his doctor suspected Otitis Media. The problem was everytime I tried to get Hassan to take his medicine he would spit it all out. His fever wasn’t getting any better by night time, it was going up to 39 degrees so I decided it would be better if he took an antibiotic shot.

The doctor decided to give him an antibiotic called ceftriaxone through IV. It was his first IV ever. It didn’t go too well. Hassan cried so much and wouldn’t sit down but we tried our best to occupy him with other stuff, it worked just until he got his dose. We left. That night his fever wouldn’t respond to any suppositories I gave him. I must’ve given him about 4 suppositories that day, plus advil once.

The 2nd day was the worst. His fever wouldn’t go down at all. It stayed at 39 degrees from noon time up to 7-8pm. I gave him two suppositories that day and showered him several times, nothing worked to lower his fever. It got so worse that at 7pm it reached 40 degrees, or so it did, if my calculations were right. I freaked out. Took him to the clinic next to home, and the nurse there didn’t help us out, she just stared at us, didn’t even speak Arabic nor English. We lowered his temp. to about 39 degrees by washing him under the tap water, plus we applied cold compresses to his head and back. My son peed on the floor and they didn’t even call the cleaning lady to mop the floors. The treating doctor didn’t think there was anything wrong with him, we didn’t even bother to take his prescribtion. I really felt like arguing with him but Rami pulled me away in the nick of time. We left that horrible place at once, the only reason we went there in the 1st place was because we worried traffic would get bad on our way to a private hospital, we just didn’t want to risk it.

After that we headed to Dar Al-Shifa. His doctor admitted him for the night, which is his first time too but we ended up staying for two nights because his fever wouldn’t go down, he was on IV for 24 hours. Only today it went down to 38-38.5. The doctor confirmed that he had a viral infection but continued the antibiotics for 3 days to treat his ears and at first he even suspected Roseola. We were discharged today, I’m so glad we were, thanks to Allah. I hated my stay there. The food was not tasty and I didn’t like their staff at all. Even Hassan was depressed, he wouldn’t eat because he was so homesick from day one. The nurses were not even taking accurate temp. readings. I got so annoyed at them. I’d always request for an armpit theremometer but they end up getting me an ear theremometer. The only good thing about the place is his doctor, he’s just excellent at what he does. Today is his 5th day and his fever is going down gradually, at long last it’s responding to medication.

What a gift Hassan passed on to me, Teresa, another housemaid and now my mom. I’m so considering taking him out, problem paid 3 months in advance.

Pics later.

Tip 1: never leave your kid wearing wet clothes if they had a fever because it might trap the air inside and only make his fever worse.

Tip 2: Never give your child more than one medication at a time, esp advil and tylenol. Each have to be given at different intervals.

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 13th, 2007 at 1:57 am and is filed under Baby talk, Health Issues. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.