The Joys of Parenting. Not

Alex has a nasty bug brewing in his tonsils, and has literally been man-down since Saturday afternoon. (Unless you count the half an hour or so windows after the Neurofen Syrup has been imbibed, and he is bouncing off the walls for a little bit. What DO they put into that stuff?) It is heart-breaking watching him in this very poor state, and I have been having flash-backs of our time in December / January when he was so sick that I didn’t know what to do. His temperature has been yo-yo-ing between 38 and 40 degrees the whole time.

On late Sunday afternoon, we ventured out to the Linksfield Hospital, to see if someone could help my ailing boy, and help us get his constantly rising temperature down, but the whole trip was a disaster. The Casualty section was very busy, and completely disorganised. We waited for over half an hour, before we had even done the paper-work, and it was freezing in the waiting room. Poor Alex was sitting on my lap shaking, with his lips turning blue (despite having about 4 layers of clothing on) and his temperature rising even more. With no prospect of being seen imminently, we decided to leave. When we got home, I raided the medicine box to see if we had anything other than Calpol, Empaped or Voltaren suppositories, because clearly none of these were helping to sink the 40 degree temperature. I found a bottle of Neurofen Syrup that was still sealed, and thankfully had not expired. 5ml and half an hour later: temperature gone. A few SMS’s were fired off to one of my friends who is a GP, and an agreement reached to take him into her rooms first thing in the morning. I already knew he had tonsilitis, as he had that something-crawled-into-his-mouth-and-died smell on his breath.

Neurofen has about a 4 hour window of effectiveness it seems, as by 10 PM we were back to a 40 degree temp, this time accompanied by vomiting. Queue Empaped suppositories, as those at least stay in. (Despite the fact that having a suppository administered is probably number one on Alex’s list of stuff he hates. Poor little guy.)

So, bright and early on Monday morning, we were in the doctor’s office, Alex once again sitting on my lap like a hot potato and shivering because he was so cold. Temp reading: 39. The doctor confirmed tonsilitis and sent us packing with a script for antibiotics and more Neurofen to keep the temperature at bay. While filling the script, I asked the pharmacist to give me a dose of the Neurofen syrup to try and get a handle on the temp before we got home. As soon as he swallowed the gloopy liquid, it came straight back out again. Along with the only bit of liquid that had passed his lips since Saturday, which happened to be blue energade. I had to choice but to catch his blue vomit in my hands. Yuck. Not exactly a feel-good parenting moment.

He spent the rest of the day, and all of Tuesday pretty much like this:

(wash, rinse, repeat)

Thankfully, this morning, for the first time since Saturday he woke up without a temperature, and he even had enough energy to give me crap a challenge getting him dressed. So it seems he is on the mend. *crosses fingers*

Caris, however, woke up with the snottiest nose I have seen in a long time. Oh, the joys of parenting.