Over the last few days, we hit our highest record of going to the doctors since Faith was born. On the Labour Day holiday, we wasted our time at our family clinic with the locum doctor on duty that day and on Fri, Sat and Mon, we went almost consecutively to her regular paediatric clinic.
I decided not to bring her to see a doctor even though she developed fever on Tue becos I knew that so early on, it would be hard to make any diagnosis on why the fever came on. Besides, I had all the necessary fever medications on standby at home. Unfortunately on Wed night, she started to develop a bit of high fever in the middle of the night. Came Thur, it was too late to bring her to her regular paedi as it was a public holiday.
A decision was made to bring her to our family clinic, which Louis and I go regularly to. It was Faith’s first time there. While the regular doctor is a very nice and competent man, the locum on duty that day, to our dismay, on the opposite end of the spectrum. She was an elderly lady and to cut a long story short, was totally inept, clueless and most importantly, wasn’t even paying attention to most of what we told her. I find that a serious flaw for a doctor. Thankfully, we only paid $12 for consultation and no medication. Suffice to say that it was a totally wasted trip for us.
Friday morning when she woke, we brought her to Kinderclinic. Unfortunately, the regular doctor is off every Fri, so we decided to see the 2nd most popular paediatrician there. By then, the discharge on Faith’s left eye had spread to the right and now, the eyelids on both were a little swollen. The diagnosis was that it was probably some viral infection as the doctor had seen a few cases recently where the kids developed swelling on their eyelids. We were given an antibiotic eye drop to administer to her thrice a day.
Sat morning, we woke up and in the midst of changing her from her PJs to a shirt, saw the onset of rashes developing around the front and back of her trunk area. Decided to bring her back to the doctor again. The symptoms that she had for the last few days seemed similar to Roseola, which she had in February, while we were in Beijing.
The paedi said that it was closer to hives, as the sizes of the rashes this time around were not the same and were of different sizes. Thankfully, the rashes didn’t seem to itch, neither did they bother Faith in the least. We were told to give her antihistamine, which we again have at home.
It was a good thing that we brought Faith to Kinderclinic on Fri even though her regular doctor was not in. Cos when we were at the clinic on Saturday, there were so many patients there that the clinic was almost bursting at the seams! In fact, I found out from the staff on Mon that they worked until 4.30 pm that Sat, when they were supposed to only work half day. Indeed, the horrible weather of late has resulted in many a sick kid.
And that brings me to the reason as to why we brought her to the clinic again on Monday... becos she started to develop a chesty cough at night by Sunday. Worried that it would escalate to something serious and might require the use of a nebuliser like the last time, we decided to bring her in again for the third time.
It was a good call too. Cos the doctor said that her lungs have just started to develop phlegm. She recommended for us to try Singulair, along with Zenmolin. When administered earlier at the onset of the cough, can be effective in curbing or having the cough escalate further into something more serious. Given her past history and the tendency for her cough to develop into slight wheezing, we decided to give it a try.
After the medication, we are glad to report that last night, she had her best sleep in the last few nights. She coughed a lot lesser than the previous 2 nights and I stopped hearing the chesty cough that alarmed me on Sunday night. We are keeping our fingers crossed that she would recover with this round of medication. Her hives have also thankfully recovered after 3 days.
However, I am irritated to note that she was bitten by a mosquito on Sunday night – I had a total of 5 bites myself! She now has 2 prominent big red bite marks on the left side of her face; 1 near her temple and the other on the side of her cheek. It took more than a week the last time even with constant application of calamine lotion for the marks to disappear. Now, she’s going to have those 2 ugly marks on her face on my BIL’s wedding this Sat. Darn the stupid mosquito! I have since taken steps to “fumigate” the room.
Sigh…
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