another hospital experience

Elijah's been sick most of this week.  It started on Saturday afternoon, when we could tell he was obviously coming down with something -- fever, nasty cough, and runny nose.  That day I happened to have a fever, too, so we didn't think much of it.  We spent Sunday sick as a family because by then David was feeling unwell, too.  There's been a virus going around (fever, coughing, etc.).

And on Monday Elijah was up and running around again, his normal happy healthy self, and I thought he was over it. 

But then on Tuesday his fever came back and he spent the whole day sick again.  The good thing about Elijah is that he is marvelous about being sick -- he just completely mellows out, and lies down and lets the fever do its job.  He sleeps when he is sick.  He rests and lets his body fight.  I made him a pallet on the living room floor out of my yoga mat and a soft, cool, satiny blanket and his special pillow.  He liked lying there because the tile floor was cool and refreshing and he was still in the middle of the action, so when he would awaken from his feverish stupor Mama was always right there to reassure him. 

Then yesterday, Wednesday, he woke up again cheery and back to his normal self, no fever.  He took a short walk with me to the Farm to buy eggs, and on the way there he carried the empty egg tray and on the way back he carried the change from my purchase.  We ate lunch with the students, as usual, and later in the afternoon he saw his friends, too.

But today the fever returned suddenly and he was miserable all morning.  You could tell he felt so, so sick.  We were monitoring his temperature, as we always do, and watching it slowly rise.  At some point, since this was the third day of fever in 5 days, we decided to test him for malaria, even though he had no symptoms except fever.  Coughing and runny nose don't point to malaria, just a virus or flu of some kind.  The malaria test was negative, thankfully.  But then a couple hours later, his temperature was over 103* F, and that's when all the books tell you to go to the doctor (if they are under 3 years old).  So I called our doctor friend in Lusaka, Christine, to ask her advice.  Should we go to the more local hospital, an hour away, or did she think this was serious enough to come to Lusaka for the weekend and get Elijah more thoroughly checked out?  She recommended that we go to Katete and ask for blood tests to check his white blood cell count, and check his chest and lungs.  So in the midst of giving Elijah Calpol (Tylenol) and sponge-bathing him and giving him a lukewarm bath to bring down his temperature, we packed up the kids and the diaper bag and the water bottles and anything we might need for a long afternoon in a crowded hospital, and headed out immediately.  On the way to the hospital, I continued to monitor Elijah's temperature and it had come down as a result of our fever-reducing actions, which was encouraging.

We got to the hospital in the middle of a torrential downpour and despite having two umbrellas we still managed to get thoroughly drenched walking from the truck!  As we reached the front door of the clinic, surrounded by a deafening African rainstorm, David turned to me and said, "You know what? It's a public holiday.  I hope they're open!"  (I have written about our previous experience at this hospital here.) We opened the door to find... they were indeed closed.  Check-in was closed but at least there was one nurse inside to evaluate incoming patients and he told us they were still accepting people who needed to be admitted.  There was only one nurse/doctor on call and there was a small group of people waiting to see him, one by one.  We explained the situation with Elijah and the nurse said there was nothing he could do for us unless we wanted to have Elijah admitted.  The lab was closed, everything was closed.  I think we agreed pretty quickly that there was no reason to admit Elijah.  At the moment he was much more comfortable and his fever was very mild.  So we got the name and number of the nurse who helped us, in case we have to return tomorrow morning, and trudged back out through the downpour to our truck, and came home.

Elijah is now asleep in bed and we hope that he feels better when he wakes up in the morning.  When we laid him down his fever was under control but it was obvious he was still not feeling 100%.  Hopefully after a night of rest he will be okay.  If he isn't, we will take him back to the hospital.  Neither of us were concerned that this is anything serious, we just felt it was better to be safe then sorry and to take action when his temperature rose higher than is safe.  But what we both find unbelievable is that on a Zambian public holiday, they close the hospital.  What, so sick people take a holiday from needing doctors?  What irony, that on "International Women's Day" we should close the hospitals so that more village women can die without proper medical attention.  I am relieved that they at least were still allowing people to be admitted if necessary, but still that seems (to me) like saying, "Closed today, come back when you're dying."