The Usual Suspects (Part 1)

No encounters with Alyssa paying KKH a visit can be recorded in just a single blog entry so dear peeps, you can expect several entries for this latest episode. Lol.

It all began when I woke up to a nasty shock on Saturday morning. Alyssa was running a rather high temperature. She was fine the night before, finally no running nose and no cough. She barely recovered from the flu which she had suffered from for more than a month, and now, fever? Paracetamol hardly help relieve her fever. I had to feed her the painkiller every 4 hours and finally, there came a point where the medicine DIDN'T help with her fever at all. (Note: According to the Pharmacy techician, paracetamol is supposed to be fed to the child every 6 hours, but the duration in between can be shortened to 4 hours if the child is suffering from high fever. They are not supposed to take paracetamol more than 5 times in 24 hours.)

At this point, I decided to bring her to our favourite place: KKH (again). The decision was made for several reasons:

1. The fever cannot be controlled anymore with the paracetamol (and by right, babies less than 1 year old should not be fed ibufen, an Non-Steroid Anti Inflammatory Drug used for the relief of symptoms for arthritis, fever, etc.)
2. There are no other symptoms accompanying the fever. Could it be something serious?
3. Alyssa was refusing food (again)

By the time we got to KKH, Alyssa's temperature has gotten up to 39.4 degrees and we were told to go to passage 11 immediately. That's what I like about KKH. They really make sure children get attention quickly if they are sick. Anyway, the doctor checked her and found nothing wrong with the ears and throat and decided that she needs a urine test. Then, the nightmare began.

It first started behind passage 11 where we have to feed her the paracetamol again, this time in slightly higher quantity as compared to the usual dosage. There, Alyssa screamed her head off, as if we were abusing her, even though we were just trying to feed her some paracetamol. I could see the horrified look on the faces of other parents and children, as they watched us struggling to feed Alyssa the medicine, and Alyssa struggling not to be fed the medicine. Then the nurse handed us a cup of Pedialyte to be fed to Alyssa over an hour. As Alyssa had refused all drinks during the day, the Pedialyte had to be given to her to ensure that she's not dehydrated and also to replenish whatever electrolytes she might have lost during the course of the day. The Pedialyte was also administered to help her pass urine so urine test can be done.

That was another nightmare. Alyssa spared no energy for struggling and screaming while we tried to feed her the drink at the waiting area. Everyone was horrified by her screams and some parents even walked over and stood around to see what was going on. We were supposed to feed her at 15 minutes interval, but we ended up taking the entire hour to feed her just 60ml of drink. Not to mention, much of the drink ended up on the floor and on my face as she made many successful attempts of spitting the liquid out. She was a ferocious baby. While it may seem like a long wait we had just to see the doctor, it was not. The hour passed even before we knew it.

As she still hadn't passed any urine during that terrifying hour, the doctor told us to wait for another hour, since we are already there and our home is too faraway from KKH. Luckily this time, Alyssa decided to cooperate with us and passed urine.

Now, you must be wondering how they collect a baby's urine. Nope, they don't perform the test on the baby's diaper of course, or ask the baby to pee into a container. They attach specially made bags over the baby's private part to collect the urine.

As only very little amount was excreted, I did not even transfer the urine into the container they gave me, but just handed the urine bag directly over to the nurses. After 5 minutes, the nurse came to us and told us preliminary test indicates Alyssa is positive for urinary tract infection and further tests need to be carried out in the lab to confirm the finding. We will have to wait for another hour for the lab test.

There goes my Saturday night.