Yanthy’s Ordeal was My Ordeal Also

It started on a Monday evening. Yanthy had slight fever so I gave him biogesic for children. I thought that it’s just due to his colds. His pediatrician prescribed a new medicine (Alnix) because his colds had been there for a number of days now even though he has been taking Nasatapp. I made a to-do alarm in my cellphone that we’re going to buy Alnix later. Then, off we went to attend a Christmas party. But as the party progressed, his fever progressed as well. We left the party after dinner and a few games, bought medicines again and headed for home. He was burning hot with fever by the time we reached our condo. My husband checked his temperature and found out it was almost 40 degrees Celsius. We gave him a sponge bath until his temperature went down a bit. We continued to monitor his temperature and gave him paracetamol Biogesic every four hours. We brought him to the pediatrician the following day since his high fever was recurring. It’s the first time he had a fever that high. The pediatrician said he has tonsillitis so she prescribed an antibiotic (Himox). It was his first time to take antibiotics.

We thought that after being given an antibiotic Yanthy would be fine. But we were wrong. Two days after he took his antibiotic, he started to have diarrhea. We informed his doctor again and we were prescribed erceflora and glucolite to prevent dehydration. His diarrhea persisted, though and to make matters worse, he started to have diaper rash. It was very painful for him every time we would clean his bottom because it was all red. There were times when I would cry with him as I clean his bottom and change his diapers. I would silently pray for his healing and that God would give me the pain instead and spare my child from further suffering. The diaper cream we used after every diaper change helped to remove the diaper rash but it kept coming back due to persistent diarrhea. Yanthy started to lose weight. Sometimes he would poop as many as 8-9 times a day. It was very scary. It was a good thing that he continued to eat and breastfeed from me. After around 4 days of continuous fever and diarrhea, his pediatrician instructed that Yanthy undergoes CBC and fecalysis (stool exam). We were very grateful when we got the CBC result and found out that it was not dengue. He had amoeba however. So another antibiotic (Flagyl) was prescribed to combat the amoeba. His two antibiotics overlapped – one for tonsillitis and one for amoebiasis. His fever gradually left him after a few more days but he still had diarrhea. His new pediatrician said that it’s normal for the treatment of amoebiasis. She said that Yanthy needs to take antibiotics for 10 days and before the 10-day period is over, he needs to undergo another fecalysis to check if the amoeba is gone. If it’s still there, he would have to continue taking his antibiotic for four more days for a total of 14 days.

We had a hard time getting stool samples from Yanthy. We were just lucky during the first time but the succeeding times were very difficult. We kept coming back to Asian Hospital’s laboratory even during the Christmas holidays. Luckily, we were able to get a sample on his 10th day of taking antibiotics. We noticed however that although his diarhea episodes were less frequent, he developed a cough. So we brought him to an EENT this time who prescribed another antibiotic (Augmentin).

When we got the result of his second fecalysis, we found out that there are still traces of amoeba so we continued his antibiotic against amoeba together with the antibiotic for his cough. This is the second time that his antibiotic overlapped.

Thank God, his cough and diarrhea stopped after a few more days of taking medicines. I thought that our ordeal was over so we chose to celebrate by pushing through with our family outing at Casa Santa. We were supposed to go there either before Christmas or right after Christmas but since Yanthy got sick, we postponed it. We were glad that it was still open until the New Year so we went there armed with our new digital camera and ready smiles.

Just a couple of days after we thought that Yanthy is all healed, Yanthy had fever again. We brought him again to the pediatrician who gave another medicine (Remidril) for colds. He got healed after 5 days of taking the medicine. But there’s another problem that surfaced. He now has crusting on his eyes. It started with his left eye until even his right eye developed excessive crusting. So we applied Erythromycin ointment on his eyes to combat the infection.

In just a span of four (4) weeks, Yanthy took four different kinds of antibiotics. That does not include the different cold/antihistamine medicines prescribed to combat his colds. My poor baby.

I thought that Yanthy’s sicknesses will all be gone by New Year’s time but I was wrong. Today, all I wish is that he’d be in the pink of health again and that his ordeal would soon be over because his ordeal is my ordeal as well. I pray that God would have mercy on my little boy and heal him completely.