The Usual Suspects (Part 2)

The wait for the laboratory test results was a rather interesting one. No, Alyssa didn't dance around and entertain me. She slept in my arms rather peacefully most of the time. What I found interesting was the little girl who sat in front of us.

I suspect she had a fall and cut her head, since there was a bandage on her forehead and there were red stains that indicated bleeding. Despite her condition, she was still rather bubbly, blabbering away to the people around her. I think she's only slightly older than Alyssa since she doesn't talk yet. Then her mum called her grandpa and and passed the handphone to her. Usually when I pass my phone over to Alyssa, she would keep quiet and not say a thing as if the phone would eat her up if she made any noise. This kid is different. She started blabbering into the phone as if she was talking some serious stuff. The blabber went on for quite some time as well and she looked very adult-like. It was really funny and cute. I wonder when Alyssa will start blabbering into the phone like this girl did. I just bought Alyssa a new toy phone and she doesn't do anything else but put it into her mouth. I think Alyssa talking into the phone will be a long way to go.

Finally, the results are out, and indeed, Alyssa's got urinary tract infection. What puzzled me was how the doctor decide when to perform a urine test on the patient. So it seems, that's the normal procedure they perform when a child suddenly gets a fever without any other symptoms. In addition, I also found out baby girls are more predisposed to urinary tract infection than baby boys. To let you peeps understand this better, I must first explain how urinary tract infection happens in babies. That's because their feces is contained a diaper and may get into contact with other parts of their bottom e.g. the part where urine is passed out. Now, we know feces contains millions of bacteria so ta-dah! That's how a baby contract urinary tract infection. In fact, babies are actually at a high risk for urinary tract infection. Anyway, because the baby boy's private part is further away from his anus, there is less contact between the feces and his private part. Therefore an urinary tract infection is less likely in a baby boy.

So since the cause of Alyssa'a fever was known, the doctor sent us back with some antibiotics (Cephalexin). Initially, she only prescribed 10 days worth of cephalexin to be taken 3 times, but at the end, she decided to increase the duration which Alyssa should take the medicine. All in all, my dear baby has to take the antibiotics for 24 days, which really sounds quite crazy. I wonder why I didn't ask the doctor why Alyssa must take the medicine for such long duration. Maybe I was too tired and wanted to get home as fast as possible. My guess is, doctor had done so most likely because she doesn't want Alyssa to suffer a relapse of the infection, until her follow-up appointment on 3rd November. The doctor did advise though that, if Alyssa's fever persist even after 3 days of taking the antibiotics, we should bring her back to the hospital immediately.

Because we only got home at 12 in the middle of the night, we did not give Alyssa the medicine. I waited till the next day so it's easier to regulate the times she take the medicine. For the medicine to be effective, it should be taken at regular timings and must not be missed. You can imagine she wasn't a very pleasant kid the next day because she still wasn't well yet without the medicine. She continued to refuse milk and took very little porridge. I had to resort to giving her my ice lemon tea to make her eat. (Relax peeps, she didn't take any of the ice lemon tea. She only played with the BK cup. She did try to eat my brother-in-law's french fries though.) She also didn't sleep well during her naps and woke up screaming rather regularly.

Things did get better in the night though. She finally started taking milk and didn't have any fever since after dinner.

But my nightmare didn't end there.