This has never happened to my children.
For some strange reason, just within a day, my toddler son K coughed continuously (also known as non-stop! It’s that bad that you wanted to hide your face from his flying sliver) yesterday. It even disrupted his daily nap.
(He last visited a doctor last week and it didn’t get any better but worse. Before that we tried natural remedy but it seemed it didn’t work on him)
Sensing something was wrong, I rushed to a nearby clinic to have him checked.
The doctor said K’s throat was swollen. And he was immediately put on nebulizer for about 15 minutes. Then he was given some medications for cough, allergy, flu, and antibiotic.
The wish to see him get better was strong. We asked him to take medicines immediately after dinner. That didn’t work. By the time we fed him antibiotic (the doc warned us that it was a bit bitter in taste and we were advised to mix with syrup or honey to make it taste better before feeding.) Well the trick didn’t work too. K refused to swallow it and eventually he threw it out. That little act caused him to throw out what he had just taken, including his dinner.
With no improvement in sight, I took him back to the clinic again after 2 hours. In fact, that was what the doctor told me. K again was put on nebulizer. I related the medicine incident to the doctor and he told me to just give him two medicines (allergy and cough) instead of all at one go.
That night was the worst for K and us. He couldn’t sleep well due to persistent cough. If I remember correctly, he only managed to sleep peacefully in the second half of the night.
It broke my heart to see him suffer and oh boy, his chest must be painful.
My wife and I “advised” him to stay at home and give school a skip today. But he insisted on going.
Two hours after he went to school, the teacher called and told us that K was coughing quite badly. And she asked me to pick K up from school. I thought it was bad but when I picked him up, he looked okay. The “bad” coughing might due to food intake during recess time that irritated his throat.
Anyway, I sent him home and he looked like a normal healthy kid. One thing for sure, he is better than yesterday.
This is only cough and it has already gave us a nice running around and unwanted worries. What about those parents who have kids with disease like cancer? It’s hard to imagine how they cope with the situation.
Anyhow, no matter what happens, we parents have to do the best for our children.
UPDATE February 25: K feels much better since last night and beside the mild cough during the start of sleep, he slept through the night. This is something I have overlooked and taken granted for all this while. Who can blame me? It’s human nature. We only appreciate what we once lost. From now on, count your blessings if you and your child can have peaceful sleep at night.
