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Drugging up the baba
Emer is on antibiotics and an inhaler. This is because she coughed up lumps of green ick. This is the third antibiotic she's on. The first one was ok; 1.5ml three times a day, white, sweetish-smelling. Didn't quite kick the infection, so we got a larger dose of the same antibiotic - but we filled the prescription at a different pharmacy, so it was a different brand, and this was yellow, foul-smelling, 2.5ml three times a day.
Two days later I went back to the doctor and said "I can't get it in to her. She took the white one, won't take this one, and is now fighting anything we try to put in or near her mouth except me." So we were given a different one, 1.5ml twice a day.
Tomorrow morning is her very last dose of it. The infection appears to be gone. She's still lost trust in my ability ot put things in her mouth, though. That's gone for now.
Then there's the inhaler, for the bronchiolitis. It's a little canister in an l-shaped delivery spray thingie, like all the asthmatics I went to school had, either secretly or openly depending on social requirements at the time (get off dusting or hoovering the classroom - wave inhaler. Get invited to join the smokers behind the school - hide inhaler). Since she's an infant, she can't inhale the spray at the instant it's dispensed, so she needs a spacer, a little tube to hold the noxious fumes in while she breathes in and out a few times to absorb them.
A spacer and mask for an infant costs about 38 Euros. So the GP told me to use a paper cup wiv a hole in. So that's what we've been doing.
Emer loves to play with the paper cups; she chews them, looks through the hole, bashes them on things - and when we approach with the inhaler fitted in it, she fights. When it's clamped over her nose and mouth and squeezed to make it puff, she actually holds her breath. She goes red, inhales deeply, gets a lungful of atropine, cries, inhales some more - after three good inhales or twenty seconds we give up and comfort her.
Poor baba. To deliver this stuff we now have to pin both her arms down and immobilise her head, hold her nose to get her mouth open, and stroke her throat to get her to swallow, and clamp a cup over her face until she breathes enough. It's brutal.
After tomorrow, I'm going to try using the inhaler as-needed instead of regularly. Just to see how she is. At least there's no more liquid medicine to go in.
Poor, poor baba.
Two days later I went back to the doctor and said "I can't get it in to her. She took the white one, won't take this one, and is now fighting anything we try to put in or near her mouth except me." So we were given a different one, 1.5ml twice a day.
Tomorrow morning is her very last dose of it. The infection appears to be gone. She's still lost trust in my ability ot put things in her mouth, though. That's gone for now.
Then there's the inhaler, for the bronchiolitis. It's a little canister in an l-shaped delivery spray thingie, like all the asthmatics I went to school had, either secretly or openly depending on social requirements at the time (get off dusting or hoovering the classroom - wave inhaler. Get invited to join the smokers behind the school - hide inhaler). Since she's an infant, she can't inhale the spray at the instant it's dispensed, so she needs a spacer, a little tube to hold the noxious fumes in while she breathes in and out a few times to absorb them.
A spacer and mask for an infant costs about 38 Euros. So the GP told me to use a paper cup wiv a hole in. So that's what we've been doing.
Emer loves to play with the paper cups; she chews them, looks through the hole, bashes them on things - and when we approach with the inhaler fitted in it, she fights. When it's clamped over her nose and mouth and squeezed to make it puff, she actually holds her breath. She goes red, inhales deeply, gets a lungful of atropine, cries, inhales some more - after three good inhales or twenty seconds we give up and comfort her.
Poor baba. To deliver this stuff we now have to pin both her arms down and immobilise her head, hold her nose to get her mouth open, and stroke her throat to get her to swallow, and clamp a cup over her face until she breathes enough. It's brutal.
After tomorrow, I'm going to try using the inhaler as-needed instead of regularly. Just to see how she is. At least there's no more liquid medicine to go in.
Poor, poor baba.