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See, see, see? Too busy to blog again. But worry not. Part 4 of Alyssa's diarrhoea will come soon (actually it's half written). And I still haven't done my online marketing...blimey.

Alyssa's diarrhoea - Part 3

What a lazy day it is today. Just been informed that the meeting with the Big Boss is postponed and could happen only tomorrow. Expected. So, I'll blog then. Muahahaha.

For those who have been reading and are anticipating, we'll get to the story of Alyssa's diarrhoea without any further a-dos.

I was praying hard that the infant care will take Baby the following Monday when we were on the way there. Although I didn't have to tell them that she was still passing motion 5-6 times a day, I felt obliged to because 1) she'll still need lots of care for her condition, 2) the infant care should know the truth and decide for themselves if they would take Alyssa. Afterall, there are many other babies around and I wouldn't want to harm them. So, I told the truth and they didn't want to take her in, unless the doctor could certify that she was not infectious. Desperate, I ran to my car to retrieve my phone (and this was caught by my colleague who also send his kid to the same childcare, and commented to me that I could run very well after I returned to the office after many days of leave) so I could call Bindu for help. Bindu, helpful as usual, gave me numbers so I could call the doc myself. However, despite paging for him and calling his clinic so many bloody darn times, he neither return nor answered any of my calls. Baby and I waited excruciatingly at the infant care for that Doctor's call and self-entertained in the meantime.

She is really quite a brave baby. Although she was sick for so long, she remained a happy baby most of the time.

In addition to the painful wait for the doctor's call, I had to endure the endless questions from the infant care regarding why Baby was still like that, e.g. why the last time she saw the doctor was last Monday, why I didn't bring her to the doctor again, why the doctor didn't change her antibiotics because antibiotics could induce diarrhoea etc. I swear I could have killed someone if the questioning persisted. 1) I brought already brought her to 2 doctors who both told me her diarrhoea will persist for about a week or so and she's already taking all the medicine she could be taking so what's the point of taking her to another doctor? Besides, her condition did improve, albeit rather slowly. 2) How the hell can anyone tell if her diarrhoea was antibiotics induced?! Her diarrhoea started BEFORE she took the antibiotics. Besides, if she didn't finish the course of antibiotics, how on earth would anyone know if the medicine would work on her?! Seriously, someone, please tell me what's wrong with these people.

Anyway after some 45 minutes, the doctor finally decided to return my call. He did not say Alyssa was fit to go to school, but something along this line, "She should get well by about a week, but no one can guarantee, sometimes they take longer. Since she's still like that, I suggest we take her stool for testing again to determine if she's still infectious." WTF?! If only he had told me that when I asked Bindu to enquire about her condition on Saturday. I wouldn't have brought her to infant care, right? Anyway, if she was still infectious, he would probably start her on another course of antibiotics and we'll have to take care of her at home for another week. Crazy!!!

Faced with such situation, I called Desmond and we both decided to send her to KKH again. She could have whatever testing she needed there. Most importantly, we, especially me, were pissed with the doctor who shirked all of his responsibility on this matter. I have been calling him every couple of days to check if Baby's condition was normal and he always said it's ok as long as she's drinking and now, he can't be sure if she's alright unless she takes a stool test again? What rubbish this is, indeed.

As it turned out, this would be the first time in Baby's life that she is hospitalised, besides the day she was born, of course.

Alyssa's diarrhoea - Part 2

It has been a crazy day. First, I set my alarm clock last night but it didn't sound this morning because the phone was flat. I thought Desmond would have charged the phone last night after informing me that it is almost flat. Goodness. Then, after rushing to get out of the house at the earliest possible time, I realised that Desmond didn't take out the keys from my bag and I have no keys to open the car door since he would have put Baby's bag and mine in the car before he sets off for work. Crazy. Then I had to wait for him to come home to rescue the damsels in distress while trying not to doze off playing with Baby. I must say she's a really adorable girl with a great smile but I was just too tired to appreciate it fully. When I got to the office, I had to rush and finish whatever I was supposed to have done last night or early this morning but didn't because I was dead tired after dinner last night, and Baby wasn't helpful at all as she had to wake up at 10:30pm and climb around till 12+ in the middle of the night. Thank God I managed to finish whatever I was supposed to do and now, I have an additional thing to present to the Big Boss tomorrow.

Alright, enough of me, and back to the story of Alyssa's diarrhoea. So, Bindu called up her doc friend and he asked if she had mucous stool. Now, how does one identify mucous stool??? Stools are mucous if it appeared jelly-like or have jelly-like substances in it. Mucous stools could indicate bacteria infection, which can be intercepted by antibiotics. Therefore I decided to pay Bindu's doc friend a visit and see if he could indeed help with her diarrhoea. Although Baby didn't pass any motion when we got to the clinic and waited for nearly 2 hours to see the doc, he prescribed the antibiotics (Cedax) to me first anyway and told me to send the stool for testing if she passed any. While we wanted to wait for her to pass motion before going back, Desmond couldn't wait any longer to get home because he was ill as well (yes, my poor husband also started to get sick on monday and didn't go to work, but accompanied us to the doc after he visited another doctor). Just as we were almost home, Baby pooped and I decided that sending her stools for testing then was the best thing to do. Poor Desmond had to drive us all the way back to the clinic despite being so sick.

In the meantime, Baby's diarrhoea worsen that day and the day after, passing motion more than 10 times per day on both days. Her poor little bum got so red she couldn't even bear with me washing her bum and would scream and yell whenever we change diapers. My poor thing. By then, we would have stopped all solid food for her and was only giving her formula milk. We thought that would be the best thing to do, to rest her stomach since there was a war going on in her digestive system. Also, both doctors never said to stop giving her milk, in fact the first one said she could continue the milk and both doctors agreed that it was a good thing she was still drinking milk despite her condition and we left it as it.

Tests results came out 2 days later on Wednesday and indeed, she had an E. Coli infection. Bindu's doc friend said the antibiotics should help with her diarrhoea and she should get better after 3-4 days. Indeed, she got better after the 2 horrendous days of pooping more than 10 times, however, it wasn't much better. After 3-4 days, that is, almost a week of taking the antibiotics, she was still passing motion about 5-6 times a day. Again, Bindu's doc friend said it's ok as long as she's still drinking milk, and she should get well in about another day or two. I didn't have much problems with that and thought it's not so bad, since she did appear to be getting better, even though my parents-in-law asked again if they could give other medicine (or medicines) to stop her diarrhoea (no, sorry, let me repeat for the umpteenth time, there is NOT MUCH medicines to be given to a baby with a diarrhoea and she was already taking all the medicines she could be taking. Thank you very much. And no, I was not angry, I was just slightly frustrated.) Also, I thought, maybe after being absent from the infant care for about a week, the caregivers would be ok with her going back to infant care even though she still passed motion quite a number of times a day.

Who knows, I ran into trouble again at the infant care the following Monday...

Alyssa's diarrhoea - Part 1

The diarrhoea started on that fateful day, 10th of July, which also happened to be Desmond's birthday. It was a happy day initially. Desmond and I took leave from work to spend some time together. We watched Ice Age 3 which was hilarious, shopped a little and played some pool. Then we picked Alyssa up from infant care, which informed us that she had already passed motion 4 times that day. We went for dinner with the rest of the family at Jumbo, Kallang Stadium to further celebrate his birthday and by the end of the night, Alyssa would already have passed motion for about 6-7 times.

Things didn't get any better the next day as she continued to pass motion more frequently than usual. By evening, I decided to take her to KKH to have her diarrhoea checked out. She actually started to run a temperature by the time we got to KKH. We got to see the doctor quite soon due to her condition. The doctor felt her tummy, asked if her poop had any blood and if she was still taking milk normally. He promptly decided that it was a viral infection since there wasn't any blood in her stools and she was feeding normal, and sent us home with a tube of nappy rash cream and some Lacteol Fort, with is Lactobacillus Acidophilus. The purpose of that bacteria is to flush out those bad ones from her gut. He felt that Smecta (a medicine to concentrate poop and therefore lessen the number of times she poops) isn't too useful and didn't give us any.

Now, doctors DO NOT give medicines to stop babies' diarrhoea, like they do to adults. This is because babies can't handle the side effects of these medicines. Also, they need to pass all the 'bad things' out of their bodies. So, doctors will let them have these runs for about 5-7 days, by which the diarrhoea should clear up on its own. I know, it is unbelievable to have diarrhoea for a week. We, the adults would probably be dead at the end of it, but that is what happens for babies.

Diarrhoea for a week was a big problem for us. Diarrhoea is an infectious disease for all of you who didn't know and can spread easily from person to person. To make matters worse, she started running a temperature again once we reached infant care on Monday, even though I had already fed her some paracetamol earlier on and these people are really strict about not letting kids with fever in. So there was no way I could leave her at the infant care to go to work. It's not that I didn't want to take care of her but I have little annual leave left.

Frustrated, I called up Bindu for help to see if we can improve her diarrhoea in a lesser amount of time so she could return to infant care as soon as possible. Bindu is a paediatric nurse at Mount Elizabeth who gave me lots of advice when Alyssa gets sick e.g. the first time she got diaper rash, when she had running nose etc. Helpful Bindu called up her paediatric doctor friend and asked if there's was anything else we could do about her diarrhoea. Then the key question came: was Alyssa's stool mucous...?

Sigh

Sigh. TFG has been complaining that I haven't been updating my blog. However, it's really not because I don't want to update my blog, but that I really don't have the time to do so! Baby has been sick for the past 3 weeks and I try to rest with whatever free time I have, not to mention I was ill for a brief period as well. Anyway, Baby's diarrhoea (that was what she was down with) nearly drove Desmond and I mad as well.

The next entry shall be about babies having diarrhoea and its management. Stay tuned (cos it's time to start work. Hehehe)!