Daddee Yah!

Caleb did.

When he first developed the fever on Sunday, we didn’t think much about it, only perhaps he’d caught something; maybe from his sister.

But you wouldn’t know it.

Caleb has been running around being his cheeky self, toddling around in circles at tv jingles, walking after HM when he sees her, playing and demanding the toys that Caitlin is playing (and Caitlin demanding it back). If you didn’t touch him, he certainly wasn’t showing any of the visual signs of suffering from fever.

Naturally worried, we took him to the nearby children’s clinic Tuesday evening- yup, it was already 36 hours since the fever started. The pediatrician kinda went “Yup, fever”, poked a spatula making Caleb puke on his floor, “Yup, sore throat, and stuffed nose too” and charged me RM80 for making us wait for him almost 3 hours (when we registered him we were told to come back in an hour. We did, and still had to wait our turn), and prescribed paracetamol and rhinothiol, two of which you can already buy from your neighbourhood pharmacy, and also what Dr Pixie‘s already prescribed before.

Yesterday, Wednesday, his fever had subsided. Again, you wouldn’t know it because of his still normal (ie high!) level of energy. Last night in the lift on the way upstairs, HM was carrying him. He had knocked out- and I still thought Why not, he’s probably lethargic from the fever. I had noticed Caleb had rashes starting from his jawline going down under his pj’s collar. Since he was already asleep I didn’t endevour to examine him, and subsequently forgotten about checking him at all when he did wake for a while.

I made a conscious decision not to administer any more medication, since the fever was going away, and let his own defenses fight the other symptoms.

Today at work Grandma calls me and says the rashes seem to be getting worse. Since HM was mobile today, I left it to her to administer to the little man.

Tonite, after coming home from work and a work-related function, HM tells me that she had spent some time looking for another children’s clinic, and was about to go to a further suburb when Dr Pixie returned call (Dr Pixie’s hours were later in the evening, at the other side of KL, during very peak rush hour). Spoke to Dr Pixie about Caleb’s condition, and without mentioning beyond “Caleb’s got a rash and he’d just recovered from fever”, Dr Pixie correctly asked questions related to all the above conditions-

“Did he have fever for 3 days?”
“Yes…”
“Did he otherwise act all normal?”
“Yes..”
“The rash doesn’t seem to be annoying him in anyway, right?”
“No..”

She called it roseola infantum

Without reading all the contents of the above link to Wikipedia, HM says Dr Pixie said:

• that kids aged under 3 get it;
• there’s really nothing we can do;
• nor need to do, and
• it will go away eventually; probably also in 3 days.

Good thing Caleb left his mess on the dr’s floor. Honestly that was our second visit to that clinic with Caleb, both times the 2 different dr’s got their diagnosis wrong.