[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5gQ8FPcfhw]
Mc Dull Prince De La Bun Does Pediatricians
On my birthday, Rockstar and I had a cold. (It’s strong enough to stun a water buffalo – we’re still reeling, Rockstar waking 4-5 times a night with fever or for water.)
So instead of buffet dinner at R66 revolving restaurant in Hopewell Center (we appreciate a good city view – all those twinkling lights that seem to be conveniently switched off by around Rockstar’s bedtime in a nod to the environment), we sushi at our favorite place right in Cyberport.
Bonus: Sushi places in Cyberport don’t charge HKD 80-100 “cake fee” if you bring birthday cake in.
Other Bonus: There’s a Park n Shop nearby and when bored Rockstar decides he doesn’t want to sit down to dinner anymore, he gets magna doodle. And then everyone gets cake.
Rockstar turns to me, “Happy Birthday Mum.” That’s really the best part.
And he says it a few more times, gravely. For such a little kid he takes things so seriously.
Then we go home and get really sick.
There are nose blowing competitions. (How else do you get him to blow his nose?)
Mr Sneeze taking Rockstar’s temperature (actually I have 2 other digital thermometers)
“Mummy? I want to see The Nice Lady Doctor.”
Uh-oh. Usually he pretends he’s not sick because he hates going.
His temperature is 38.5 – 39.5 degrees Celsius and responsive to baby biogesic.
(We give him as little medication as possible, lots of steam baths for colds, water and loose clothing and a fan for circulation during fevers, and he’s never had antibiotics – I wanted his body to build some natural resistance to Hongkie bugs because yours truly, with an early childhood in Petaling Jaya / Sandakan and adolescence in Penang, still gets floored by the most annoying little cold bugs here. I think it’s because I was exposed to different bugs growing up in Malaysia.
Anyways, the day he doesn’t respond to what little meds we give him we’d call in the cavalry, is what I’m saying.)
“And her Thomas Trains.”
Ok, so he’s still lucid.
I also worry about him OD-ing on meds lying around (both grandfathers are either on meds or serious nutritional supplements and in the case of the former it’s sometimes hard enough getting em to take the pills, without also remembering to put them safely away).
But I don’t believe in hiding stuff away as effective prevention (or telling them meds are candy, like I’ve seen some old-fashioned grandmas on the street do – I find that one really dangerous).
I’d rather drum it into Rockstar the stuff is dangerous and can make him very sick. “Then you try for me, Mum.” Oh wow. My son the genius.
The nurse who picks up the call is rather snippy. Til I switch to Cantonese. (I really think we sometimes mistake a lack of command of English for rudeness.)
“His nose is veee-ry dirty. Are you cleaning it?”(My mum used to get so stressed. No matter how much we cleaned it before the visit, there would be some part of Central on the way to the doc’s that was under construction and his nose would be crusty by the time we got there)
“Always. Always feed a baby his medication on an empty stomach – okay?”
“That’s such a naughty baby.” (This one stopped when I started booking appointments “erm, The Rockstar All The Nurses Hate,” which brought a barely concealed snort of laughter. Not. That I meant to be funny – who can remember Rockstar’s reference number when they’re at work and the markets are moving? But they could always find his card if I said that.)
(Overheard to another mum) “I see, and where does he attend school, CIS?” (Chinese International School – one of the absolute toughest, most expensive private schools to get into. The poor mum flinched, no.)
SOMETIMES we mistake it for rudeness, I said.
But we haven’t had any bad ones in a really long time. And the two highly qualified pediatricians in attendance are professional and humble, commanding the respect of even the most high-strung grandmothers.
The nurse asks for Rockstar’s temperature range, symptoms, what meds we’ve given him, did you also give him Polaramine?
No? Well, you can’t – from our records, the bottle we last sold you should have expired.
WHY couldn’t she have just told me that without asking if I had given Rockstar any? I barely dodged another potential “I am an unfit mother” guilt trip.
Separate reception areas for Well Babies and Sick Kids… As an etiquette, this trip we don’t even peek in this door!
Rockstar does fine at The Nice Lady Doctor (TNLD)’s. Since the nurses all remember him as being Ivan The Terrible, the nurse in attendance expresses surprise. That might uh, be a little our fault:
Kings met Dr Leo Chan (before Rockstar took a recent liking to his partner, aka TNLD, Dr Wong) in the 24 hour Accident & Emergency section of Hong Kong Sanatorium at 2am one night. Rockstar, then about 2 months old, had been rushed in by his father after screaming the place down since midnight.
That night, Kings couldn’t bring himself to tell the crusty good doctor the real reason he had been dragged out of bed:
JD (who has a very sensitive stomach for a dog) had been dripping diarrhea all over our apartment. I had barely cleaned it off the floor with a wet-wipe when Rockstar dropped his pacifier Right There. A Visiting Family Member offered to sterilize it, returning from the kitchen and easily popping the pacifier back in his mouth.
We thought little of it ‘til a half hour later, when Rockstar started up the Mother Of All Rock Concerts. When he dropped his pacifier again, we noticed Same Visiting Family Member splashing tepid drinking water over the dirty pacifier by way of “sterilizing” it. The pacifier that fell where the dog had diarrhea, had been “sterilized” the same way, before finding its way back in our 2 month old first-born, our only child’s mouth.
It was like in one of those action movies when a bomb hits the deck and everything is in slow motion…. “NNNNNNNN-OOOOOOOO-ooooooooooooooo……………” Right before the whole building goes sky high. The windows blow out. Everyone falls to the ground. Shrapnel flying all around.
We became desperate to be able to quiet Rockstar, so we knew he was alright. After a futile hour, Kings drove, white-knuckled, in the single-degree Hong Kong winter to the Sanatorium with an almost purple-faced Rockstar strapped in his car seat, screaming bloody murder in his ear all the way there.
In attendance was a GP (general practitioner) we had previously encountered, and who had inspired little confidence in us – he’d instructed us to put Rockstar’s medication in his milk (new babies sometimes burp up their feeds, and often don’t drain the entire bottle – HOW would you know how much meds had gone in the baby if you put it in the milk? was our thought.)
A freaked out half deaf exhausted Kings stood there and stubbornly insisted “Call in your best physician. Just. Call. Him.”
That’s how we met Dr Leo Chan, highly respected Hong Kong pediatrician. He was Not. A Happy Chappy.
When he was done erm, talking to Kings, “Call your wife now, I want to speak with her.”
Boy, did he.
(But you betcha we aren’t sorry)
Rockstar didn’t always go to Docs Chan and Wong’s. We used to have a very sunny pediatrician who gushed and gushed about how cute our baby was. A former colleague stopped seeing her for that reason.
Bizarre? In any other world, yes.
But in banking, your friend is usually not the one you encounter in the market who smiles and tells you everythings’ alright – right before they make a killing on your miscalculation (which they never point out). Your friend is the one who snaps “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Because they didn’t intend to make the extra money off you and now you’re gonna waste their time rechecking before you can give them the trade.
In other words, we were a little concerned we were only getting the good bits from Doc Sunny. We don’t need just the good bits. We also need to know if there’s something we could do good-er.
Docs Chan and Wong may never know why we were New Parents From Hell that night long ago. Unless my gynea told them.
We learned later another former colleague had stopped seeing Doc Sunny after she’d prescribed only 2 days’ antibiotics “because that was all your insurance covered.” (In case anyone missed that, “Do you think I care about the cost of a few more days’ antibiotics when it comes to healing my child? And you could have asked,” is the general response here.) But we’d already switched by then….
