A week to forget
Calvin posted this on Feb 21st 2008 at 17:23 under Children, Evening Echo Column, Parenting, Writing
Published in the WOW! supplement of the Evening Echo 20/02/2008
It’s been a tough week.
We’ve been dropping like flies, if you’ll pardon the use of a terribly tired and clichéd phrase. I just don’t have any energy left to come up with something more original. The Jones household was hit by a curious illness about a week ago, and one by one it felled everyone bar me and one of the twins. How we escaped I don’t know – but it knocked everyone else for six.
It all started when twin-one and the little-one both got a bit of a temperature. Now, a temperature in and of itself isn’t a bad thing. Temperatures are a natural part of the body fighting the illness. We rather stay away from drugs, if possible, and apart from the high temperature the girls seemed quite perky, so it was off to a warm bed early for them. We checked them through the night, and the temperatures seemed to be stabilising. Sleep would, we thought , prove to be the best medicine.
Next morning I was up early, sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee, when twin-one – the one who’d had the temperature the night before – marched in wearing her school uniform. She seemed much better. We bid each other good morning, and she went over to the sink to get herself a glass of water. Then I heard what I can only describe as a whimper, and she started to shudder.
I moved quickly, and caught her just as her legs gave way. Her eyes rolled back in her head. For a moment I flirted with panic. My little girls seemed to be having a seizure and I didn’t have a clue what to do. I racked my brains, desperately trying to dredge up some long-buried bit of first aid I’d learnt long ago, all the time calling her name, trying to get through to her, trying to bring her around.
My wife arrived to find me holding her, and immediately rang for an ambulance. Twin-one came around while my wife was on the phone. In all the entire episode had only lasted about twenty seconds. Her face was ashen and clammy, and she didn’t know where she was at first. “Is this in real life Daddy?” were the first words she uttered. It had been the longest twenty seconds of my life.
After talking to the operator we decided there was no need for an ambulance, and drove straight to the local medical centre, where both her and her little sister were checked by the doctor. It was, we were assured, nothing to worry about – in all probability just a one-off event triggered by the fever. He suggested kiddies paracetamol to keep the fever under control and sent us on our way.
As twin one got better, my wife got sick, and the little one got even worse, her temperature soaring to a worrying 39.7 degrees. That’s when we heard about the meningitis scare. A boy from the area was in intensive care having been diagnosed with the potentially fatal disease of the nervous system, and his little sister went to play-school with our daughter.
It’s difficult not to fear the worst in these sorts of circumstances. Where something like meningitis is concerned, and you have a sick child on your hands, it’s only natural for parents to worry. I Googled meningitis – big mistake – almost all of the symptoms partially matched the little-one’s condition… and then we spotted the rash. With her protesting like mad I rolled a glass over her skin. Did the rash disappear… I couldn’t be sure.
We piled her into the car and headed straight for the doctor’s. It turned out to be a heat rash brought on by the temperature – which was also causing all of the other symptoms she was exhibiting. She was given the all clear and we were sent home again. We’ve been watching her like hawks ever since… and it’s exhausting.
Everyone’s on the mend now… thankfully, after a week I’m more than happy to consign to history.
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