Tuesday 24 March 2015

A Weekend Of Pain

This weekend has been one of "those" weekends where basically everything goes tits up.

In the week, the 5yo had ulcers, large nasty buggers on her tongue. After 92 redials, and an hours wait in the surgery to see the doctor, we were packed off to buy Anbesol. I swiped it over her sore tongue and promptly sent her through the roof. If she'd have remembered the expletives Mummy sometimes uses I could have forgiven her for using them. That's £4.50 I won't see again.

Fast forward to Friday evening, her tongue now has a white coating with what looks like a pink blister. By Saturday morning she doesn't want to eat and drink. Well she does, she's hungry but it all hurts her mouth.

Unfortunately she has a huge aversion to medicine. Calpol, Nurofen, you name it. I've tried putting it in drinks and yogurts, begging, cuddling, cajoling, shouting, threatening hospital stays with big injections but nothing can convince her to take them.

I decided to take her to a walk in clinic. We were triaged quickly and then waited another hour & half to see the GP. The 5yo has strep throat & strawberry tongue which may or may not turn into Scarlet Fever. Apparently the strawberry tongue is a massive symptom of Scarlet Fever along with fever and a rash which luckily she doesn't have.  We may have caught this just in time but she is highly contagious.

We're prescribed an aggressive 10 day course of antibiotics. How am I going to get them into her? I know from previous experience that you can get other flavours of amoxicillin apart from the regular banana. Finding an actual chemist that stocks it is another thing! I deposited miserable child with the Grandparents and went in search. I found lemon flavour at a local Superdrug store.  Unfortunately they didn't have a 10 day supply so I have taken what I can and have to go back in the week.

After an up and down night, Sunday heralded the part of my weekend that makes me want to climb under the duvet covers and hide. Sunday means HOMEWORK.  Now its the 9yo turn. Again we end up with lots of screaming (me) crying (9yo) and all over spellings, grammar and other literary based things.It doesn't help that the literacy grammar homework sheets sent home have at least two grammatical errors which make reading the sentences harder.   Finally we compromise on the 9yo doing at least half.  It should be pretty basic stuff; a sentence with a word missing and he has the choice of four or five words to put in there.  The problem is my 9yo cannot grasp past tense or construct a sentence without the word "like" in it like 49 times.   Still we trudge on whilst I repeat the Mum's Mantra "This Too Shall Pass"

The 5 yo is still in pain, she is taking the antibiotics (she loves Doctors and will do everything they say) but is still fighting me over actual pain killers. Daddy went on a shop run for jelly & ice cream. I went on a shop run for different flavoured pain killers.  We managed to get her to take some Calpol mixed in with ice cream. It seemed to work for about an hour but at least we saw a glimpse of her back to her old self.
Dr Raj - Cbeebies "Get Well Soon"

4 comments:

  1. How do doctors miss these things?! I'm glad that she has finally been diagnosed. Oh and I'm with you on the homework thing *cries a bit* - we've made a new rule in that it all needs doing before Sunday. As if we need anything else to make us hate Sunday evenings even more?

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  2. We've had a few things mis-diagnoed with different doctors. I swear they all think we are paranoid parents.

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  3. Dealing with pain is never any fun. I've had pain issues myself in the past and have found that they can be truly debilitating. I've also found that seeking help from professionals when it comes to pain management is vital to feeling better and knowing the techniques that are going to work well for you for your own future health.

    Betsy Collyer @ US HealthWorks - Santa Clara

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    1. Hi Betsy, I agree and I'm all for seeking help but here in the UK we have the NHS which is wonderful when it works. We've been misdiagnosed a few times in the past which just prolongs the agony. Thankfully she's all better now.
      Thanks for taking the time to read and comment.

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