Sick (Delayed Post)

A few days after his birthday party, Alexander got sick. He probably got it from my mom, who had been sick before the party. It all started after we took him to the doctor's office for his one-year checkup on 12/15. The poor baby had 4 vaccines. He started having a fever the same afternoon. While a low-grade fever is a common side effect for one of the vaccines, it was still worrisome for us. Up till now, Alexander had never had a fever, and had never been sick. The fever didn't go away the next day. In fact, it got worse. He also started having other cold symptoms.

We called the doctor's office; they wanted us to keep an eye on him. I've found that it's a pretty standard response from the doctor's office: "Keep an eye on him. If it doesn't get better by X day, then you can bring him in." We gave him children's acetaminophen, which helped bring the fever down. However, as soon as we stopped the medicine, the fever came back. Other than giving him acetaminophen, putting warm towels on him, and propping his bed, there wasn't much we could do to make him feel better.

On one hand, I told myself that he was building up his immunity. On the other hand, it still sucked to watch him suffer. The coughing sounded terrible and kept him up at night. Added to this was the nightly torture session: saline drops in the nose and aspiration. He absolutely hated it, as evident from the struggling and screaming.

Maybe I'll eventually get used to the idea that kids get sick, but as it was the first time that it happened, it was pretty scary. We just kept taking him back to the doctor's office for checkup, whenever his symptoms worsened or did not get well by X day, as the various nurses/doctors instructed. On 12/23, 8 days after the initial symptoms, the doctor saw cloudy fluids in his ears - the beginning of an ear infection. He was to take antibiotics for 10 days. On the same day, Brian also went to the doctor (he had also been sick), and was diagnosed of bronchitis.

With just 3 days to our planned trip to Taiwan, we decided to cancel the trip. Even though the doctor said he should be OK to fly by then due to the antibiotics, we didn't want to take the chance of him (and Brian) getting worse during the trip, especially in the air. I'm still disappointed that we missed my brother's wedding, but it was the right thing to do. Our spirits were there with them.