Silver Case

Little fellow has had a cold and runny nose for a while now.  After we played all weekend, Sunday night he got a fever, so Ling took him to Doctor Y. Y. Yip this morning (Luke know refers to him as ‘Yip’ in his new found voice. The ‘Yip’ comes out sounding like Luke was a coyote pup). He gave him some oral antibiotics and some runny nose medicine.

He was ok during the day, but late afternoon his fever returned, which makes him feel and act horrible.  I hurried home at 6:30 because we were supposed to go pickup the new maid, Maltida-from-Burma.  I came home to a crying kid and a crying mom. She’d been trying to get him to take his medicine for thirty minutes and was at wit’s end.  I tried my hand too… cajoling, threatening, bribing, bluffing, disguising, outwaiting, debating with Luke to absolutely no avail. He absolutely refused the viscous antibiotics. He normally doesn’t refuse anything except pink panadol, but he felt like shit and was particularly resistant.

After nearly an hour of this, Luke was terrorized and Ling was worn out so I said enough.  I paged Dr. Yip and he called the A&E ward at Gleneagles and gave the nurse orders for an antibiotic jab. uh oh.

While we were there, the effects of the fever suppository (administered by a grimacing father) kicked in, and little boy, up two hours past his bed time, started feeling good again. Delighted he was up in the dark, he was having a grand time in the hospital lobby.  When his turn came we brought him in and sat down on the exam table.  I think he new something was up because suddenly he looked pensive.

Poor little fellow. We all held him while a fourth nurse gave him his jab in his little thigh.  He was shrieking and carrying on, but after it was over, I pointed out, “see, it’s all done.”

He almost immediately stopped crying and then one of the aunties came by and offered him a packet of crackers. He eagerly opened them up and started eating.  After they put on the bandage, he thanked and said good-bye to all the nurses and orderlies.  Goofy little guy.

I think the jab is going to leave his leg sore.  Anyway, as soon as we got home he immediately went to his maternal grandmother to show off his sore leg and circular bandage.

In our analysis, he cried for 20 seconds in the hospital, as opposed to crying for an hour over the oral antibiotics.  So I don’t know how much a threat, “if you don’t eat your medicine, we’ll take you to the hospital for a shot” is going to be.

By Ling’s calculus, it’s a great plan — three day’s of shots is the full regime, as opposed to a week of oral meds.  It’s considerably less grief all-in-all.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 11th, 2007 at 11:05 pm and is filed under Luke Slater.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.