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Sunday, March 12, 2006

Scariest Day of my Life

Today was officially the scariest day of my life. My daughter has been ill since Friday afternoon. She was throwing up everywhere all Friday evening and she's had the squits since then (and still has now). She's also had a temperature since Friday.

This morning she wasn't getting any better so I called NHS Direct and was told to give her calpol and ipubrofen every 3 hours and she'd be fine, it's just a bug going round. The nurse at NHS Direct also said that her temperatur would be ok at between 37 and 38 and if we were worried then to take her to the doctors tomorrow.

We'd run out of calpol and none of the chemists opened until 10am so I took Sophie downstairs and she asked me for some milk. I sat her on the sofa in the living room and went into the kitchen and put her some milk in the microwave. I heard a funny noise from the living room so I went to check on her.

When I got in the living room she had started having a fit. She was shaking, her eyes were rolling, she was drooling and shaking. I have never been so scared in my life. Mrs Sane was crying, I called 999 and an ambulance turned up a few minutes later. The paramedic took her temperature and said she was too hot and that's why she had fitted. She had fitted 3 or 4 times by now.

We got her to the hospital and spent a few hours fretting over her while she was swinging between sleep and a zombie-like daze. Then all of a sudden, like the flick of a switch, she was back with us. Fully coherent and chatting away. She's back home now and we put her to bed about an hour ago. I'm fighting the urge to go and check on her every 10 minutes.

The hospital staff were great, as were the paramedics. NHS Direct I will never use again though. The paramedic said 38 was too high a temperature for a baby and the dosage of calpol and ibuprofen they said we could give her was too high - she's 18 months and they said she could have 40ml of each in 24 hours. The hospital have said 15ml of each in 24 hours - that's
less than half of what NHS Direct said. My only other gripe is that the roads to the hospital were covered in snow. The council hadn't even bothered to keep the route clear overnight.

Anyway, she's home and she's ok, that's the important thing.