My Dollie Baby

Subject: Racia's Viral Fever
Date: 1 February 2009 (Sunday)
Racia is 1 year and 10 months, 3 weeks and 4 days old today.

We are back at KK A&E today! Its our 2nd visit in a period of 6 months (The last time we were here was when she was down with HFM). Racia had this persistent high fever and we could not managed to bring the fever down.

It all started last week when she came down with a bit of cold and cough. On Friday night, when we reached home after work, daddy spotted some serious mosquito bites on Racia's legs and elbow. Apart from a leaky nose, Racia was overall, quite alright after her afternoon nap on Saturday. She started getting a fever. I found her burning up and she appeared lethargic. I got quite worried and wondered if it was caused by the mozzie bites somehow.

She was immediately given a dose of paracetamol. Her fever shot up to 39.4 that night and we had to insert a suppository to bring it down. Her temperate hovered at 38.5 degrees through the night and she was crying and fussing.

On sunday, her fever was still not down and it shot up again to 38.9 when she was napping and this prompted us to give her another suppository. By now, we were quite worried as her fever shows no sign of receeding. I even soaked her in a tub of warm water hoping to bring her temperature down but was still unsuccessful.

At 5pm, we made the decision to bring her straight to KK A&E as I was worried that it could be a cause of dengue fever. I reported her condition to the nurses at the entrance stations, the nurse measured her temperatured and it stayed at 39. We were asked to registered and told that we will be called via the speaker shortly as we were classified as "serious" case. After a fairly short wait of about 15 minutes (nurse gave me water and a cloth and as that I can continue sponging her while we waited) , we were ushered into the examination room.

The doctor who examined Racia confirmed that it is a viral fever and that she will be given ibrufen to bring the fever down within the hour. We will have to wait for an hour and the doctor call for us to check on her again. Doctor advised that if her fever continued on till Wednesday, we will have to bring her back in for a blood test in case of secondary infection. I guess it was relief that it was not dengue!.

After the huge dosage (4ml) or ibrufen, we proceeded to wait outside. Racia fell asleep while waiting and by the time the doctor checked on her again, her temperature had came down to 38 degrees. (Doctor had mentioned that it takes 1 hr after consumption of ibrufen for the body temperature to go down by 1 degree).

We finally came home at 10 plus at night. Because of her fever, Racia had to miss our yearly CNY gathering at her Yi Por's place.