GeetaBihari.COM

It’s been a difficult winter for my daughter Riana. In the past four months, she’s hardly gotten a break from various illnesses. She’s had everything from common cold and cough to high grade fever, laryngitis, bronchitis, pneumonia, recurring conjunctivitis, ear infection and stomach flu! Right now she is suffering from a stomach bug that is causing her to vomit and have diarrhea. After spending six hours at the Emergency Room last Tuesday night and getting her three bags of Saline and Dextrose, I was very hopeful that her appetite would return and once again she’ll bounce back to usual eating habits. It has been three days now and she is still completely uninterested in having any fluids. On an average, her total intake in a 24 hour period is about 7 oz! She’s already lost close to 4 lbs!

Giving Riana bath three times a day and doing four loads of laundry each day is indeed frustrating. But, what is more frustrating is the response we get from the nurses when we call the emergency line. Every time we call indicating that our daughter is dehydrated and just not interested in taking fluids, we get the standard response and that is to try our absolute best. We’ve tried it all… We’ve tried the bottle, the sippy cup, spoon, dropper, even a medicine syringe. We’ve tried forcing milk into her but it comes right out. We’ve tried Pedialyte, water, juice, water melon, popsicle, regular formula, soy formula, anti-diarrheal formula and nothing seems to work. Today, Ashwin took her back to the Acton Medical to be seen by her Pediatrician, Dr. Christopher Cooper, who is a very good Pediatrician. I really like the facility. The doctors promptly reply to all your emails and concerns. As much as I understand that there isn’t much they can do other than rehydrate her through IV, it is still disappointing and frustrating. It is hard to see your 11 month old baby being poked several times with needles. Unfortunately, it is a stomach flu which needs to run its course. There is no medicine to get rid of the virus. It can take from two to four weeks! On top of this, she also has cold, cough and double ear infection right now. All at the same time…

Riana’s first birthday is on Tuesday, March 4, and I hope she has a nice day. Hopefully she’ll get better by then. At this point, we feel very helpless. There is nothing we can do to help her. She’s had more than her share of illnesses this winter. My only hope is that she comes out of this 100% and that none of these will have long term consequences on her health.

For now… we are taking it one day at a time…