Mommy's day of hell

I haven't been blogging because it's been a week of sheer exhaustion, illness and hell. And to top it off, today's been one of those days that I wish I'd wake up from and realise it was all a bad nightmare, snuggle up to Packrat and go back to bed. Unfortunately, even before I went to bed last night, I knew this was a nightmare that wasn't going to go away when the sun came up. In fact, I was pretty sure that come morning, it would be worse.

Why?

The twins have been sick since Monday. Since they've started playschool, they've gotten sick about once a month, but have been getting better at it in the last couple of months, in that when they did get sick, they bounced back quite quickly. This time though, it didn't seem to be the case. In actual fact, it seemed that as time passed, they got worse. So much so that we took them to a paediatrician. I usually avoid seeing a paediatrician because they're expensive and I like my Family Physician very much and she costs half of what the paediatrician would charge on a good day. Anyway, we were at the paediatrician twice this week because both children had terrible wheezing and fever. At first, it was brocholitis (an infection of the small air ways in the lungs) and that was bad enough because we had to administer antibiotics and we are a family that is some what anti-antibiotics.

The problem was it didn't seem to make Baby J better. In fact, her fever seemed to follow a disturbing trend of spiking at night and requiring us to give a very uncooperative toddler her fever medicine in the middle of the night. And this morning, she just lay limp on her bed, not wanting to move.

That was really the straw that broke the Mommy's back. The Mommy's back was already feeling the strain last night when I had to endure and ignore Evan's hysterical and frantic cries for help as he was pinned down and forced to breathe through an inhaler. Evan, unlike Jordan was not felled by the fever but by the wheezing and coughing so bad he sounded like a lawn mower's engine trying to start.

So, a limp child and another one who sounded like his throat was suffocating himself was all I needed to decide, screw the expensive paeds clinic and just head straight to children's emergency at NUH.

Because of the fever, we found ourselves cooped up in a small cell of a room where the twins between the hours of 9 and 4 when we were holed up in there quickly acquired severe cabin fever. And the numerous tests they had to be put through, blood test, oxygen level test, blood pressure test, x-ray and the numerous cycles of Ventolin administered to reduce the boy's wheezing took an enormous toll on the twins.

Having said that, I am quite proud of them for being brave and enduring all the poking, prodding and cold stethescopes on their feverish bodies.

The result, after all that? Bronchial pneumonia with the possibility of it being brought about by mycoplasma. All not good news for little toddlers.

But we thank God for little things and I'm grateful that they were allowed to come home and I think they were immensely thankful too. Their first point of comfort, sitting on the couch with Papa and watching what to me was copious amounts of Hi-5.

The trauma of the day stayed with them though, with Evan yelling out in his sleep "Go home! Go home" and then yelling" No more! No more!" and Jordan sitting up in bed, screaming, flailing her arms and cowering in a corner at the imaginary X-ray technician who scared the beejeezus out of her yesterday.

There's also the continued annoyance of them having to use the inhaler every four hours and foul medicines that no one could possibily be fond of. But in the hope of making them better, we'll just bite the bullet and bear with the bloodcurdling screams of protest.

















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