sick nephew

friday afternoon, i decided to take the afternoon off and self-indulge a little. i made an appointment for a facial at 3pm and decided to go for a short tan at the pool during lunch. and as to be expected, there were many tanners when i arrived. most were regulars but there were a couple of new faces. and despite the distance between the "newbies" and the more regular tanners, i could sense the tensions that resulted from roving eyes. haha... but that was not the focus of this post. i had just gotten myself comfortable into my tanning deck with a text came in. 

it was from my brother telling me that my nephew had been hospitalised. it was kinda unexpected for things were fine last week when i visited them. and now, he had been warded for lung infection. and as a result of the infection, he ran a high fever, coughed non-stop, had runny nose and vomited constantly. and his hospitalisation couldn't have happened at a better time for they were expecting my sister-in-law's mother to arrive (from china) that very afternoon. to cut the long story short, i ended up cancelling my facial appointment and spend the whole afternoon taking care of my nephew in the hospital while his and his wife busy themselves receiving and settling the mil. 

and wow... a sick 16-month old boy was not easy to look after. whenever he stirred from his sleep, he was grouchy, crying most of the time and keeps looking for his mother. otherwise, he would simply sleep on my chest as i rock him gently and sings children songs to him. and during the 4-5 hours with him, there was no way i could put him down. he would scream and cry whenever i try to do it and he would grab me tightly. similarly, whenever the nurse came to take his temperature, he would scream and cry and resisted them. in the end, i had to take the temperature, feed him his medication, change his diapers, etc etc etc as i carried him. 

and i could understand why he behaved this way. he must have felt superbly uncomfortable for apart from his lung infection (that caused him to have high fever, non-stop cough, and runny nose, etc), he had also been subjected to all sorts of blood tests, injections, etc. for that matter, he had an intra-venous drip inserted into his foot and to prevent him from pulling it off, the hospital had it bandaged up. he must have associated nurses with needles by then and to a little boy, the whole experience must have been nothing short of traumatic. 

poor boy... i hope he recovers soon.