POXed in
08 Jun 2010 Leave a Comment
in Uncategorized Tags: children, illness
K contracted chicken-pox from her nursery. It has been fairly mild so far. She has rashes on her neck, forehead, hands and her legs but doesn’t have a high fever or any of the other symptoms. Our childminder was not sure if she had it or not, so we gave her the week off. We have taken turns to be with her, this week. Thankfully, both of us had chicken pox as children.
The biggest battle has been to keep her indoors. When it is a beautiful, sunny day and we are both home, it is very very hard to explain to a 3 year old why she cannot go out to play. A typical conversation
K : ‘Mummy, can we go to the park now ?’
Me : ‘No baby, we cant go out this week, because you have chicken pox’
K : ‘Ok then can we go in the car ?’
Me : explain as patiently as I can, why we cant.
Rinse, lather, repeat ad infinitum.
This has been a bigger problem than her itching, too.
I am supposed to be on holiday, but am practically working through the day, fire-fighting a problem. Why do they all come up only when i am out of the office ?
K – Update
19 Aug 2009 1 Comment
in Uncategorized Tags: children, illness
I got called by agent Y on Monday, while at work. K was rather unsettled and was repeatedly asking for me, crying. I left for home immediately and K was running a really high temperature when i got home.She was lying down, so listless, lethargic and clearly quite sick. It was a heartbreaking site.
I filled in the online questionnaire for swine flu, since her symptoms were pretty similar. I got a 12 digit authorisation code to get the liquid gold (Tamiflu) from the pharmacist. I went to the pharmacy with authorisation documents for both me and K.
The whole pharmacy experience was like being part of a secret cult. The entire conversation was held in whispers with the pharmicist whispering the dosage, side effects to me. Maybe I am over-reacting, but I definitely got the feeling that he served me super-quick.
K has been rather delirious since we started her on the tablet. She has been incredibly restless, irritable and cranky. She insists on walking from one room to another, while sleeping no less !!. It has been a rather, strange and a very unsettling experience.
We were so unsure about starting her on Tamiflu. We still dont have any proof that it is indeed swine flu. I hate over-medicating and normally give her medicines, only as the last resort. Also, Tamiflu is known to have adverse side-effects on children, so was not really sure of the benefits.
Finally, we started her on Tamiflu mainly because the drug is only effective in the first 48 hours of the illness, as it works mainly by preventing the spread of the virus. We were quite close to the 48 hour time-frame and so we started her off on it. She also falls in the high-risk category, because of her asthma and being under 5 years.
Of the known side-effects, she seems to have got 2 quite strongly. She is rather delirious, specially at nights and also has quite strong nausea. Overall, it is rather unpleasant. I am hoping the worst is over and she is better soon.
