Sunday, September 13, 2009

Viral fever hits the house...and a scare...

Well, what can a parent say... keep well my child.. thats all I guess...

My wife is the mad lady you might imagine that wants to shut all doors to the windows, no insescts should get in the apartment, even if we have to live a different closed box kind of life. And I used to curse her for her ways, but the last week's experience has changed me altogether.

Last week, when I took on cold/cough, I had no clue that the whole family will get into that.. especially the little one... And most unfortunately, he's the one who got affected the most.

My cough has come down a lot, and its great to be able to talk without coughing.. But, the mom in the house and the kid have taken it harder. I didnt get fever but they did.

The mom came out of it in three days, but the kid didnt. Somehow his fever managed to return after 3 days. On Saturday, we consulted a local doctor in our home town, she prescribed some medicine and a blood test. It was a terrible sight, watching blood taken out for the test. He was screaming like anything.. :( my poor one...

The test was intended to figure out if he has malaria. The result was out in 3 hours, which said that he has malaria and a dangerous one at that. Out of the types of malaria, this parasite, known as falciparum. Basically, it scared the hell out of me. The doc mentioned few bad things about this parasite, and advised injections and what not for him.

Driving back to home, I was thinking thousand things. Out of them was, should I trust this report ? At the risk of spending one night without medication, and some more blood extraction from his tiny body, we decided to go for another test, at a different lab, in a relatively larger town close to us, and consult a different doctor.

The idea was welcomed by everybody at home, and we travelled to Agra in the morning. This time around the blood extraction turned out to be even harder, he cried more.. :( But, the result that came out was, he has no such thing as malaria, let alone the dangerous type. At that very moment, I felt like going back to the earlier lab guys and kick their ****.

The doctor, who already had his doubts about diagnosis as malaria, laughed out load and told me to relax. He said, "the baby got the fever back probably because both parents still have fever and cough going on". That was most comforting. We bought some face masks and returned home...

Now, we have decided to split up, so that he gets lesser exposure to whatever we parents are carrying. I'm in diff town, he's somewhere else with his mom, and with some aunts, who are healthy-fine at the moment, so nothing is going to catch him again.. :(

Now, I wonder, what if it was malaria, I wont have been able to pardon myself for the lax behaviour wrt insects and apartment cleansing etc...

Great feeling that he's fine now...