Nasty stomach flu

Thank you for praying for my son's recovery. It's very much appreciated. He's well on the road to recovery as I type this post.

We were at the hospital bright and early yesterday to have the paeditrician check my son. His temperature at the clinic was 38.3C even though I gave him panadol and Volatren (a suppository) a few hours prior. The Dr reckons it's the stomach flu which on average clears in 3 days. My son was so tired from poor sleep the night before that he had dozed off on the way home.

When he woke after an hour's nap, he started complaining about his tummy. I quickly started him on his medicines.

That was the start of what seemed like endless rounds of visiting the toilet, washing his bum, drying him, applying a nappy rash cream, putting on a diaper (I'm not keen on handwashing lots of soiled underwear), putting on his pants, and repeating the whole cycle again and again!

I think he must have poo'd about 3-4 times each waking hour yesterday. Seriously.

I started to panic when there were bits of blood in each watery stool deposit in his diaper. So I brought him to see a nearby GP (a reliable one) with the soiled diaper, cos his paed was in a meeting. She agreed to take a stool sample for culture but thinks it's a case of a rather bad stomach flu going around.

The GP herself has a mild case of the stomach flu and she recently saw a few kids who had it bad. My aunt from Australia who's back for a visit, caught it on Monday. We just heard that her friend who lives in TTDI had it bad with vomitting, diarrhoea and bad spasms.

My poor son was suffering and I couldnt help ease his pain. I gave him all the medicines - Colimix, Buscopan, Smecta, and heavy doses of my probiotic, LactoGG. Yet, nothing could soothe him. He was constantly saying "my tummy is not well" and whining. Nothing could distract him from the discomfort.

By night time, it became "pain....pain...my tummy is painful". I felt so helpless. He tried so many times but couldn't fall asleep because of the pain. After praying about it, it came to me that it might be gastric pain. I gave him my Gaviscon (thank goodness his paed replied my sms and gave the ok!) and that temporarily soothed him.

Middle of the night, the diaper leaked badly which required changing the bedsheet, the dust mite protector, washing him, washing his pants, putting on a new diaper, washing off the poo from the bedlinen, soaking it in anti-bacterial liquid, wiping the toilet floor...I was so thankful that I had a helper!

He required a few more doses of Gaviscon before dawn but at least both of us got a few hours of interrupted sleep.

This morning, I simply had to send off the comforter to the dobi, and buy some Clorox wipes. I was not taking any chances seeing that it was quite contagious and proceeded to disinfected his bedroom floor and walls (my helper accidently swiped the soiled linen on the wall) and toilet floor.

I'm so relieved that he's better today. His stools are slowly forming. There's significantly less complaining. His appetite is picking up. I'm no longer giving him any fever med. Now, it is my turn to take panadol - body aches and headache! LOL