Not me

I ended up spending the night at the hospital to Thursday morning last week, with my two-year-old. We’ve all had colds and coughs for a few weeks, but on Wednesday evening she was acting really really dull. Not wanting to eat or drink or play or even tell us she was uncomfortable (she’s been pushing to use the toilet the last couple of weeks, although we’re keeping her in nappies between toilet trips while we’re between working washing machines). We had gone out for supper, and she tried to express some enthusiasm at the restaurant but just didn’t have the energy. She hadn’t seemed so bad before we went out, but by the end of the meal both DH and I were agreed we should go straight to the walk-in clinic around the corner and get her checked out.

There they took her temperature (low fever), listened to her breathing and then gave her a chest x-ray (DH took her in to that, since I’m pregnant, so he heard the radiologist say definitively that she had pneumonia, which I didn’t), a blood test, and then an inhalation treatment. She *really* perked up after the inhalation, and guzzled down the orange juice in the bottle she’d been clinging to like it was a teddy, and wanted to climb and play. Still, the doctor at the clinic wasn’t happy with her breathing (still too fast and laboured, so gave us a referral for the hospital, but suggested we not go there en famille. Since it was then midnight, DH took the four-year-old home to bed, and I took the younger one to the hospital. I gave them the referral, and told them what the clinic had said, but they never seemed to pick up on the pneumonia diagnosis, and just gave her paracetamol and a bunch more blood tests for a now much higher temperature, and then had us stay till morning. I wish I’d pushed them on that, because they simply sent us home in the morning saying it was a simple virus, and we didn’t end up going to her regular doctor until today. He wasn’t exactly happy at the idea she potentially had untreated pneumonia for five days, and said she needed to start strong antibiotics immediately, which obviously we followed through on. He did say she seems very well for that, but not well enough. Hopefully the antibiotics will help her get completely back to herself this week.

So more to feel guilty about, then.