I was supposed to have a mini birthday celebration yesterday. Had invited a couple of friends and prepared all the food for the bbq. But that morning, on the 5th day of Jerome's illness, the PD rushed us to KK hospital for Kawasaki Disease after seeing the rash on his palms and back.
From what little I have learnt... the cause of Kawasaki Disease is unknown. It's a result of the compression of blood vessels or something and if untreated, it will lead to dilation of the blood vessels. Symptoms, like those my bb is experiencing now, are high fever, vomiting, irritability, red palms and soles, with the fingers and toes swollen, rash on the body, dry red lips, red eyes etc.
For the last 27 hours, we've just been waiting and waiting, while baby is enduring the pain with a drip linked to his wrist. As there is no specific diagnostic test for Kawasaki Dissease, it is diagnosed based only on symptoms, which could also be symptoms of other diseases. Therefore, they have to do blood tests and urine tests to check for other possible diseases before they commence the treatment for Kawasaki Disease.
The medicine for treatment is actually derived from the blood of many people, and it will be given to him over a 8 hour period. As there could be allergic reactions to the medicine, they want to do more investigations before taking action, so most likely we can only start treatnent tmr. In the meantime, all he can do is take paracetamol to control the fever and endure all other discomfort.
My heart wrenches in pain, each time I hear him make any sound... and there is nothing I can do about it. With the drip, temperature-taking every hour and blood pressure-monitoring every 4 hours, he can hardly sleep. He refuses to be put down and hubby spent 6 hours last night just carrying him.
I felt less guilty after knowing the disease because I knew I hadn't caused it by exposing him to germs. But whatever the cause is, I still feel terrible. I look at other families with their children and I wonder why my bb was so unfortunate. I recall his usual hyperactive self and my heart aches.
I feel quite useless because I can't carry him for long and I can't look after him. He is attached to my maid because she coaxes him to sleep and that hurts me even more because I didn''t want that at all. I am not one of those parents who leave their babies to their maids. I was looking after him on my own for 7 months and we were so close, until one day... because of some assumed disease, I had to "rest" as advised and leave the baby to the maid at night. She developed this bad habit of carrying and rocking him to sleep. Because of that, since I do not have such stamina, she continues the habit she started, and he continues to be attached to her, and it breaks my heart.
I sometimes resent hubby because I feel that he indirectly caused us to drift apart by encouraging me to seek treatment. I sometimes feel upset because he has the stamina to look after our baby, but would rather leave it to the maid. And it's only nowadays that he knows how it upsets me about our baby's bond with the maid, that he is taking over some duties of looking after him.
I had wanted to celebrate my birthday this year because I felt that it was a significant year in my life. But never did I expect, that the drama hasn't ended. I try to find a reason for it... maybe it's karma, maybe it's because I'm not religious, maybe it's like what the fengshui person said... otherwise why??? why me? why my baby? why us? There's probably no answer to that and for now all I can do is stay positive because there will be sunshine after the rain.
