A Week of Flu

It's been a week since Kieona caught flu, and she's not getting any better. Kierra caught it too on Monday, a day later than Kieona with yo-yo fevers and incessant coughing throughout the day and night for both. We heard that meatpie was sick too - he was made to go home from school just 2 hours after he went there last Monday.

Yee Yee called and told us Pie was in hospital this morning (his PD's clinic), and was waiting to do his blood test, mucous test, X-ray. He had diarrhoea and had wheezing sounds. Was told he got bronchitis soon after and other test results will only be out on Monday. Meanwhile he's got to be on the neubulizer for the next 3 days. Poor Pie. Must be tough.

Our girls are really not doing much better. Today's visit to the GP found that Kieona has swollen lymph nodes and that's why the pain she complained in her neck area. It is not a suprise, since she had been coughing really hard the past few days. If anything, I thought it was getting worse. Dr Cheah said we have to monitor as it's spreading downwards and may lead to pneumonia - which seems to be getting very common for the young kids this season.

Argh!!! I just hope it doesn't get any worse. Mommy already wakes at every drop of the pin in the night, and it's been a week without much proper sleep. What a bad time too... since our retail store will be opening in 2 weeks and we've been busy preparing.

Their school mentioned in a health alert sent via email that a child caught HFMD. Don't know which is worse. Perhaps this flu was around to let the kids avoid any contact with that terrible virus. So are we lucky or not? I'm not sure.

However, I must say that I have been more than a little disappointed that the health alerts given by the center hasn't really been too proactive. I wonder since we never quite heard a beep, if any notable virus has been going around amongst the kids. The only personal contact we had was when I called the school to inform them of how my kids were faring and to find out if there were certain symptoms in other sick kids so that I could stay on my toes. Alas, didn't get any information which makes me a wee bit disappointed. Nah, don't think I'll be updating in future since it seems this is not the norm.

I had always felt that the more prudent way to deal with such "center epidemics" is to call and check with kids who have been away for 2 or more days to ask if there's anything wrong or if there are certain symptoms, so that the school could alert parents and we can take note if there is any serious virus spreading. While we have always kept our kids away to prevent any spreading of viruses to their schoolmates when they are ill, I wonder if others are doing the same, and am starting to lose my trust in that the school can enforce such behavior, or at least keep us informed of health situations, rather than keeping within MOH guidelines. Sigh!!!