Busy and Tired

I've been quite busy, to the extent of not chatting online for one week, or more than that.

Coco has fallen ill, to H1N1, I highly suspect, and so did the Apex doctor.

She first developed a high fever of 38.2 degree celsius at 2.30am on the Thursday before last. So she skipped school that day and I went to work hoping that it would come down by the time I knocked off. When it didn't, I took her to the 'quack' at Sembawang MRT since it was 4.30pm and no other clinics was open. It happened to be a Thursday and unfortunately, my mother's and my most trusted Apex clinic is closed on Thursday night. And as a true blue quack clinic, the doc gave her two days MC and diagnosed it as a throat-infection-induced fever, without prescribing her any antibiotics.

2 days on, she still had high fever (39.6). So I took her to the 2nd doctor at Silver Cross (Marsiling) since it's a PPC (Pandemic Preparedness Clinic) and the two regular docs there are aware of her asthmatic condition, and asthmatic people are supposed to belong to the 'high-risk group' according to the quack.

Much to my dismay, it was not the regular docs on duty. It was some doc I hadn't seen before. He asked us some questions, including if the 1st doc gave her any antibiotics. And funny enough, this doc also didn't prescribe any antibiotics after we told him that the 1st one didn't give any.

And he said that there wasn't any need to do a H1N1 test since there wasn't any point in doing it anymore as 48 hours had passed and medication for H1N1 wouldn't work on her anymore.

Okay, fine. I waited for him to say more, but he said there's nothing else. So I took her out and decided that since there wasn't even an MC given, I probably didn't need to pay. So we left.

When we got home, William said that the clinic called and said that I left without paying $26.50 for consultation. I thought it ridiculous to charge me an expensive consultation fee when nothing is given, not even an MC when her temperature was 39.2 during her visit and it was a Saturday night already. As a doctor, you mean you think that she would recover by Monday morning given such a high temperature?

We continued to give her the same lame medicines that didn't work a bit. Her temperature continued to soar. It went up to 40.3 on Sunday. On Monday, I took her to our trusted Apex doctor. There, he gave her 'stronger' fever medicine and 'stronger' antibiotics. The doctor said that she ought to have been given antibiotics 'much earlier'. Damn the quacks! Yes, make that two!

After 24 hours, the fever was just about gone, like what the doctor had predicted.

However, up till now, Coco is still coughing and vomitting.

So worrying. I'm calling the doc tomorrow to ask him what to do.

Besides Coco's illness, I'm also busy preparing a child for a storytelling competition. And the other teacher-in-charge tries to keep us till 4.30pm or 5pm whenever she can. It's still her working hours but it's almost or just about ten straight hours for the kid and me. And we're just so tired. Besides, alot of time is spent on grousing over the father, and discussing things that could be talked about at other times. I find that alot of time is spent unproductively, and I just don't fancy that. If I want to work, I make sure every minute is focused on that piece of work. And being single, I don't think she understand how I feel. As it is, she finds the father of the girl difficult, uncooperative and troublesome when he expresses displeasure at her being taken out of classes or staying back for hours for practices.

I'm quite miffed at the fact that she goes around telling other teachers about how difficult the father is and how quick she reported the girl entering the Semi Round to the bosses. I know what these people are thinking but I'm just not one of them.

Actually, William is also down with ILI (Influenza Like Illness) and was given 7 days of MC.

But as you can tell, I'm not too bothered about it for obvious reasons.

At one point, when he told me that he felt pain and tightening the chest, I even asked him,"Didn't you say that you wanted to die, many times? It would be good that you die over it."