A trip to hospital

We spent Saturday night in the children's a&e with C as he had a fever that was not going away and the lymph glands in his neck were the size of eggs.

It started with a bad night on the 26th Dec, we'd come to my parents' house in Wiltshire and as he was in a new bed I didn't think much of it, just calmed him when he cried and brought him into our bed at around 2am when he consistently kept waking up.

On the 27th he was bright enough, happily playing with my family and showing them his new trains. It was a miserable day for weather but we had a quick half hour splashing in puddles with my bro and went to see the sheep. C did not want to go near the sheep and I carried him, muddy boots and all, to look through the stable door at a large lamb and a pig.

He didn't eat much, but I put that down to the fact we were away from home, it wasn't his usual meals and he always eats terribly at my parents.

The night of the 27th he was hot and showed signs of a sore throat as he cried whenever he coughed. I stayed in his room all night and neither of us slept well.

On the 28th we had a big family day with 17 of us at the house. The boy was not well, he had calpol every 4 hours but most of the day he sat snuggled on my lap. Before guests arrived T took him upstairs and they both had a long nap.

I slept with him again on the night of the 28th and we had a better night, only waking occasionally. His glands were swollen but I thought it was probably a bad cold and that calpol would help get him through.

Sat 29th was another family day with 14 of us. We had planned to leave for home just before tea time, but C seemed to be getting worse so we left a couple if hours earlier after presents had been shared. C got given a Thomas takeaway pack, and you could tell he was feeling v poorly as although he showed an interest he didn't want to leave my lap. He did clutch hold of the new Thomas engine and hasn't been far away from "little Thomas" since.

On the 3hr drive home he slept most of the way and we said we'd see how he did on Sunday then take him to the doctors on Monday. When we got him out of the car his glands were even more swollen and his neck was at an odd angle. I gave him a warm bath whilst T called NHS Direct, but all he got was a recorded message. The bath didn't help so we bundled the boy into the car and drove the 20 mins to our nearest hospital.

Here's our experience of the children's a&e.

- It was 7.30pm and there was nowhere to park, the main carpark was closed. We drove a couple of circuits feeling desperate and looking for road signs, eventually T dropped me off two streets away, as close as we could get and I carried C through the rain to the emergency entrance.

- I queued in the wrong section. My mistake, I missed that the kids section was on the left, so for 5 mins I was the only person queueing in the adult a&e. There were people on reception but no one called me forward. Nurses and orderlies walked passed me, I was clearly holding a sick toddler and not one of them said I was in the wrong place. After 5 mins (which felt like a lifetime) I turned around to see if T was arriving yet and noticed the closed door to the children's a&e.

- The receptionist was good. There was no queue here and she took my details efficiently. T arrived and we went through to the waiting room together.

- The waiting room was packed. We got a seat but families after us sat on the floor.

- One of the first messages we heard on the tanoy was for a porter to go to the child resuss room to take a body to the morgue.

- We waited for over an hour to see the nurse.

- Kids were running about all over the place, there was a seperate play room full of toys but the most popular game for two girls was to run out the back door, through the busy corridor and through the front door.

- Others were like C; really subdued and sitting on mamas laps. One toddler had a nasty head injury, one had an asthma attack next to us.

- C hated being seen by the nurse. She took his heart rate and he cried when I got him to put his finger in the monitor. Taking his temp was accompanied by a mass of whimpering, it was 38c, and that was with the calpol we'd given him earlier.

- The nurse gave C ibuprofen and told us we'd see a specialist doctor. She said it would be a long wait and we should get a sandwich but actually when we got out the Dr was waiting for us.

- She checked over C and said it was lympoditis. She said it was just a symptom of something else and because it was so close to his brain we needed to get it under control so it didn't spread (my heart stopped for a bit after that). She said they could take him in and put him on an IV drip, but if we felt we could give him the medicine then it would be better to take him home.

- We left with a 7 day course of paracetamol and a 10 day course of antibiotics, along with an antibiotics prescription as the bottle only lasted 7 days.

- We were told to take him to the doctor on Monday to check he was getting better and to come back to a&e if he couldn't breathe or seemed to be getting worse.

- In my rush to see the nurse when we were called I left my coat in the waiting room. It was still there.

- Then we left, C and I stood in the cold and rain whilst T retrieved the car from the street miles away from the a&e he'd had to park it on.

C is much improved now, his glands finally went down on Tuesday and in between medicine he's almost back to his usual self. The follow up appointment went well, we now have a bottle of ibuprofen to add to the list of things to take.

Giving medicine to a toddler is no mean feat. He spits out, makes himself sick and has to be held on a lap if we give it on a spoon or in a syringe. He's more likely to drink it disguised in a milkshake, but then takes at least an hour to drink it with us cajoling him all the way. This was the first time he's been scarily ill and I'm so relieved it's over. A nasty end to 2012 but a good start to the new year as he was so much better on the 1st.