Friday, June 24, 2005

Father's Day

I spent father's day at the Emergency Room. It's not actually father's day because Australia celebrates father's day in July or something but it's Father's day in other parts of the world.

At any rate, my little girl wasn't feeling too well since Friday. She would complain about stomach aches and she'd vomit twice a night. On the Friday we took her to our regular doctor who gave her the briefest of checks and proclaimed that it might be something she ate. On Saturday, seeing that she still wasn't feeling too well and considering she vomited twice the night before, we took her to another doctor who though he might have seen some signs of tonsillitis and prescribed some antibiotics.

On Sunday, my poor girl was still vomiting and we decided to take her to the ER. Now, a trip to the ER isn't the most lovely of things to do but I surprised myself seeing as how calm I was. I took her in myself and left the wife and our boy home. It was stressful on my poor wife and I know she would have wanted to be there with us. Although seeing that we probably took the better part of 5 hours in the ER it was probably wise they stayed at home.

The ER was busy, it was a Sunday and with most GP's closed, this was the last resort for most patients. I took my girl to the Women's and Children's hospital which is nice because I know they did serve kids exclusively.

An ER waiting room is probably the most depressing place to be if you sit and take it all in. I saw a kid no more than 4 or 5 years old being wheeled in with likely a head wound and blood dripping all over him and his mother and I couldn't help but be

a.) Sorry for them and
b.) Thankful that my girl wasn't in any way as seriously hurt as the poor child was.

We waited a while until we got the results of the urine test and x-rays but the doctor couldn't see anything wrong. She did see that my kid hadn't moved her bowels in a while and she suggested an enema to be sure. So, I took her to a room and had her take a poop.

In the end, the doctor could only hazard a guess that it was a viral thing and it would clear up. Amazing that sometimes with all this medical technology, medicine is still a hit and miss sort of affair when it comes down to it. But the doctor was right, it did clear up and my daughter is happily back to normal. She's healthy and eating well and basically is back to her normal, chatty self.

I'm just glad that's over although I'm pretty sure that wont be the last time we'll all have to deal with doctor's and hospitals. I just hope it wont be anytime soon. The last time we were in a hospital before this was 2 years ago. I hope it will be 2 years or more before I have to do something like this again.

As an aside, the doctor did encourage as to make the girl poop as regularly as we could. Because of this, and our persistence ( my kid's favourite word nowadays ), the little dear now would proclaim to all and sundry "I made a poo!" in her most enthusiastic voice. It doesn't matter if she did the deed at home or at a restaurant toilet, to the delight / embarrassment of us, her parents. :)