My activities on the chain have been very skeletal for the past few days, no thanks to a sudden bout of diarrhea that hooked my son and left my family at the mercy of the moribund Nigerian health sector.
It all started when I noticed the poo of my 10-month-old son to be unusual on Sunday, December 27th. It was watery and greenish in appearance. Since he was not really displaying any symptoms of being sick, I thought it is just one of those one-time abnormal poo colors due to what he ate the previous day.
Fast forward to the evening of the same day and I observed that he was not really as playful as he normally is and was running an abnormally high body temperature. I asked his mother how many times he's pooed aside from the one I observed earlier in the morning, her response came as a shock to me.
I was not really counting. Maybe ten times or more. She responded
What! And you are carrying on as if things are normal? Why haven't you raised an alarm?
Without waiting for any answer, I told her to prepare right away and let us take him to the hospital. This was around 10:00 pm local time on Sunday. We deliberated a bit on which of the many hospitals in town we can take him to know that the festive period might affect the operation of some. After trying out the nearest private hospital without any success (it was late). We headed to the only government teaching hospital in town, about 21 kilometers journey.
We went straight to the children's emergency unit and were attended to after the usual delay that seems to be the characteristics of health government hospitals. He was immediately given an intravenous injection of paracetamol for the fever and was later prescribed some drugs after seeing that his situation is not so critical. One of the nurses passed a comment that he does not look dehydrated and tears flowed freely when he was crying.
We headed back home around 1:00 am in the midnight of the following day. He was restless the entire night, kept running temperature, and threw up every bit of the drug given to him. By dawn, it was obvious that extra attention is needed and that led us back to the hospital. He got admitted into the children's emergency unit after explaining the situation to them. The diarrhea won't stop and seemed to be coming with a stomach cramp each time.
I was given a list of drugs and other things to be purchased and that was how my unending journey to and fro different locations in the hospital started. The hospital covers a huge landmass and sometimes, the distance between where my son was admitted and where I need to get a particular drug is as long as 2 km. Within 6 hours after the admission, I had covered roughly 30 km distance as indicated on the dashboard of my car.
A couple of tests were recommended while preliminary treatments were ongoing. These include
- Full blood count
- Malaria parasite
- Blood serology
One of the results showed low blood creatine and urea. This really got me a little scared because I know for sure that creatine and urea have to do with liver functions. I genuinely hope that it is not a situation of surreptitious discovery of a major health problem while treating a minor one. Anyway, I also got to know that low creatine could also be a result of body dehydration. It could be that the bouts of diarrhea actually left him a bit dehydrated.
Also, the malaria parasite result came back positive. The preliminary treatment involved the administration of ringer lactate intravenous drip in addition to intravenous injection of artesunate which, in retrospect, was a correct decision because the presumptive malaria diagnosis was later confirmed.
Intravenous ciprofloxacin drip was also administered and as of yesterday, oral malaria drug in the form of artemether-lumefantrine combination as well as an oral probiotic consisting of a strain of Saccharomyces cerevisiae known as Saccharomyces boulardii were being administered. The frequency of stooling (and the stomach cramp) has reduced greatly as of yesterday and we are likely to be discharged today, hopefully.
Of particular interest to me is the administration of probiotics after ciprofloxacin has been employed to tackle the obvious gastro-enteritis. I never knew this could be a thing until I saw it being done and was forced to read a bit about it.
As of yesterday, before I left the hospital, my boy seemed to have returned to his usual active self, even though he still looks strangely at the drip set on his hand. By the way, it took a bit of effort before the intravenous line could be set on his hand. His chubbiness made it a bit difficult for the target vein to be located. AT some points, the nurse in charge threatened to shave one side of his head off in order to locate another vein. My stay in the pediatric unit taught me that setting IV lines for children is a huge task.
I will be heading to the hospital immediately after posting this.
Thank you all for reading.