Go Away Pain....!

I have ear ache, have had for 3 days now. It is not totally unbearable but I know it is there.
I wandered all around the Fieldays yesterday with it (more on our visit to this later in another post)

Finally yesterday I could take no more and took myself off to the emergency doctor.
For the grand total of $73 they took my pulse, blood pressure and temp (all normal) asked me a few questions, felt the glands in my neck, looked in both ears and proclaimed that they could see nothing, no build up or pressure or even infection.

They laughed when they saw I was allergic to Codeine and Ibuprofen and said oh well Paracetamol or Tramadol is all you can take.
Oh and to feel free to come back to them if I feel it has got worse or I develop a temperature.

I knew it was a waste of time going, I felt fine apart from the pain, but unfortunately looking inside someone's ear is not something that anyone else can do except a doctor. And seeing as how I was really sick over Easter with an inner ear problem I was not tempting fate by leaving an infection to brew to cause more hassle than I currently needed.

Oh and on a even sadder note.......I resigned from my job today and do not have anything to go on to.

Isn't life exciting when you want it to be!

Doctor's

We are very luck in the fact that we have a wonderful Doctor's surgery not too far from us.
Although sadly we are leaving them and moving somewhere else!

As you know Steve has Diabetes, and with this comes the need to have a good family Doctor.
Steve had a great one in Auckland, had been with him for 18 years. Several times the Doc felt he had failed Steve and would tell him so, informing him that he needed to find a new Doc because he was unable to maintain Steve's Diabetes, really this was just his way of telling Steve that "hey I am doing my part here, now you have to get on board as well to maintain your diabetes at a good level!"
When Ben arrived, I too joined this Doctor's practice and it became our family practice. It was lovely. We all loved the Doc and he was a wonderful person to have in our family, I think he even treated mum on occassion.
Him and his wife came to our wedding here in Hamilton 2 yrs ago, that is how well we knew him.

When we moved to Hamilton we chose the local practice, little larger than our old 2 Doc practice, this one had about 12 Docs, but still we were happy with them.
We got assigned a Doc and all was great until last year, when sadly the Doc had to leave for personal reasons and dissappeared overseas.
Since then we have not had the same Doc twice.
Now for most people this would be ok but for Steve this is no good.
He needs consistency, he needs someone who knows him, knows what he is like and knows when to kick him up the backside when he is being so so about his diabetes.
The Doc we got assigned dropped her hours and suddenly she was only working 2 mornings a week, the other Doc sharing with her has since left and now there is someone new. We feel like we are always repeating ourselves to the latest Doc when ever we visit.

The other day I mentioned to Steve that there was another Family Practice in the other direction, ok this new one is 2ks away instead of 600m, but hey we are not fussy.
He liked the idea, so today I checked them out.
They have 6-7 Docs, several of them working fulltime. They have all the other necessary facilities that go with the practice and low and behold they also have our old Doc (the one who left last year)
Turns out he only went overseas for 6 months and hoped to come back to the old practice when he returned, but they sadly were unable to accomodate him on his return.
So he is now working permanently fulltime at the new practice and that suits us just fine.

4 lots of enrolment forms completed and hey presto we now have a new Family Doctor.
Looks like it is one we all like and now know is going to be around for a while. Ok it is a little further to go when needing to collect a perscription but still just round the corner, so not too much hassle.

4 Yr Old

Alex had the wonderful fate of having his 4yr old Immunisations yesterday.
Consequently he is not a great fan of the nurse at the surgery because according to him she 'put holes in my arms!'
He even went so far as to ask if he had to ever see the nurse again? Because he said he doesn't want any more holes in his arms!
The look on his face when she put the first injection in.......if looks could kill, she was way out of here!
That made getting the second one in more of a challenge, although he was actually a fabulous little boy with the nurse and I am very proud of him.

My son, sadly does not do pain, no way at all, so this of course left him very fragile for the rest of the evening.
He didn't want a shower because his arms would get wet!
All he wanted to do was snuggle with mummy because then he would be safe.
He didn't like Grandad, who is currently staying with us, decided that Grandad needed to go home!
Didn't even want daddy because daddy was the one who suggested a shower in the first place!

Alex is the type of person who will hurt himself, cry for a while over the sore arm, leg, hand etc. He will then be fine for a while, but then several hours later will see the wound and promptly start howling again, because he remembers that he has a sore wound!
He can even work himself into a frenzy several days later.
As I said, he does not do pain!

Insulin

Today has already started out well......!
Here is a conversation Steve and I have already had by 9am on a Saturday morning!

Steve: Oh I seem to be out of my long acting insulin!
Me: Well we better call the pharmacy and see what time they are open today!
Steve: I don't think they are open on a Saturday...!
Me: Well I will try.

Quick call to the pharmacy and discovered that indeed they are not open on a Saturday morning. So the conversation continues....

Me: Well you will have to go to the local Accident and Medical Clinic and see the doctor and get a prescription for the drug you need?
Steve: It's ok, I will be fine!
Me: What?? Till Monday?
Steve: Yes
Me: Well you just call you Dad when you have a hypo at 3am!

His Dad is currently staying with us, but he is almost 80 and is blind. So actually of no help what so ever at 3am.

Now I don't want to take responsibility for this. It is Steve's illness, he is a big boy, he can deal with all of this himself. BUT I am the one that will have to deal with this in the middle of the night when he has a hypo!

I am happy to remind him about the fact his drugs are about to run out, but again he is a big boy and can do it himself.

But for now, he has no long acting insulin and probably won't have any until Monday when I collect his script, which is a little too far away for my liking!

Consequently, Steve has just walked into the study and read this blog as I am writing it! I guess now he understands where I am coming from and has agreed to go to the local Clinic and Pharmacy to see what he can get.

Sickness

We have been very lucky this year with sickness in the winter months, especially as we are now in August and it is apparently spring on Sept 1.
We usually hit sickness in this family, or more to the point we have in the last 3 years, usually at the brginning of June just as Alex has his birthday.
There is the usual colds, coughs, flu, viruses etc you get the picture.....

Apart from Alex needing to see the doctor in June for a nasty infected scratch on his face from a tree branch and then in July needing to see the doctor again for an infection in his little boy parts! Ouch I know. We have done very well.

So imagine my surprise when Alex didn't want dinner last night and when having a cuddle discovered he was his own hot water bottle with a raging temp of 39c.
So the usual stripping off of clothes, drinking of juice and taking of Pamol was prescribed.
This carried on for the whole night. He kept his temp up there between 38.5 - 39.4c
Steve slept in Alex's bed and he slept with me. We woke up a few times to administer juice and check temps, but it wasn't that long a night.
What was long was the sitting at the doctors for 2 hours this morning waiting to be seen!
Turns out at 8.30am we were unable to get an appointment with our GP so had to go to the emergency clinic.
Alex more or less slept on me the whole time we were there. Ben got restless and so I had to call in reinforcements and get Steve to come from work to look after Ben, he needed attention and food.
And at the end of the morning at the clinic we left with the normal diagnosis - VIRUS
Therefore no treatment extra to what we are already doing.

Although Alex is now a different child to how he even was at 8am this morning. Man they bounce back so quick!

Sick Boy Again

So as the party finished on Sunday I happen to notice Alex's eye...full blown raging conjunctivitis. At least we have a reason for the significantly high temps. Only bugger of it is that we have to go back to the emergency doctor as you can only get drugs for this through them, not straight from a pharmacy.
So to begin with we thought we would wait and visit our own doctor first thing the next day, but with another temp of 39.6, we decided we couldn't wait.
So 7.45 at night, I am having cute little conversations with Alex as we wait to see the doctor, again!
Luckily he was fab, told us of this bug going round and Alex had all the classic symptoms, so 1 script for eye drops and antibugs later and we are sailing.
Alex is just such an angel, before we got home he had already told me that he would sit on the side in the kitchen, that he would put his dummy beside him and that daddy would give him his medicine and that mummy would put the stuff in his eyes.
And true to his word we have had no trouble getting any of this stuff into him, he has been very cooperative with it all.

Sick Boy!!!

Late Saturday night I went and checked the boys before going to bed myself.

And what do I find....a little man (Alex) with a raging temperature, 39.5 deg. So a quick whip out of bed, strip him off, give him panadol and lots of juice.

An hour later the temperature hadn't broken but he was nicely asleep in his bed and in fact that is where he stayed until about 4am, when he came to find mummy.

He snuggled in with me and then about 6am he was running a temp again, back up there in the 39's, so more stripping off, more panadol, more juice and more sitting with him.

He stayed quite active during the day, even though his temp never came down below about 38.2 deg. He even took a really nice nap in the afternoon.

But when he woke up he was not a happy chappy, and for 2 hours was grizzly, moaning and crying. He already had a lovely cough, which the doctor had said was viral and would just have to do its course on its own, but I had a feeling something else was bubbling in there somewhere. So I eventually decided to take him to the emergency doctor.

Now every mother will tell you, you don't take your child to the emergency doctor at 5pm on a Sunday night. Worst time of the week to go, but in fact it was really not bad, only about 3 other people waiting and when we had finished there was no one waiting!

Wish I could have said the same for the Chemist, seems it was the only open Chemist in the area and so everyone was going there to get their scripts filled.

But with raging ear infections in both ears, we had to be there. Needed those antibiotics!

We dosed him up at 6 when we got home and we woke him up at midnight to get more into him, by 7am today he was a different person, thank god for the power of antibiotics. Luckily that meant he was fine to go to Daycare. What a cruel mother I am.