A mother in distress

I have seen it countless times in my practice as a physician - mothers in distress when their children fell ill. It is inevitable. The burden is just so much, a mother would wish to take the place of her child. I can only give reassurance to these mothers that everything will be okay. I was there too many times in the past. And I very well know how it feels. But the latest happening with my youngest son was so different it made me doubt my own diagnosis.

Ever since we started a family, it is either me or my hubby who prescribe medicines for the kids when they are sick. It was I who performed their immunizations,  administer their medicines, including their daily dose of multivitamins. And I always have the final say on the kind of milk they drink as they grew up. In short, I have my hands-on with regards to my kids.

Taking care of Raymund was an easy task. From infancy up to present (he is now 11), he gulps down any medicine I ask him to drink with no questions whatsoever. Even under very high fever, he is easy to rouse from sleep to take his antipyretics. But even so, I was always worried when any of my kids are sick. The feeling is doubled when Ralph got sick just recently.

It started with a fever which easily dissipated with intake of paracetamol. As the disease progressed the fever became more difficult to subside even with regular intake of paracetamol. I was beginning to worry on day 3 as Ralph refused to take in anymore paracetamol as he was feeling nauseated. And so I shifted to ibuprofen. I thought it will be okay by then but he developed the same feeling with the second medicine. Of course he was taking an effective and nice-tasting antibiotic at the same time but he refused the ibuprofen even with my pleadings. Wow, I had to result to suppositories. It was okay with him the first time but he started complaining again with suppositories. I was relieved we were already on day 4 when this happened and the fever is already starting to subside. I also found an anti-fever gel patch that helped relieve fever discomfort. Oh, how he loved it.

What got me so worried? On previous occasions, fever in any case used to dissipate by day 3 and it never comes back during the course of the illness. It was so different recently. The fever was still high on day 4, though it responded to antipyretics. Lack of sleep for three consecutive nights with lots and lots of worries made my world to stop turning for a while. Whew! It’s just so hard to be a mom.