27 May

notes from the sickbed

Oh god. Since I last wrote, I have been sick. Like, really sick, fever and awfulness and no energy at all and then on Sunday night B caught it too. She spent 3 days at home with a really high fever of 39.6*C (103.28F according to Dr Google) and even though Dr Google said that it was OK as long as the fever was under 40*C and lasted less than 5 days I got worried. My poor baby. The only problem was we haven’t got a proper doctor here yet. One time when B was complaining of stomach pains we went to the Camden medical centre near Tanglin Mall and it cost us over $400 for the consultation and tests, and they didn’t even find anything!

As part of Dave’s package we got these membership cards for Shenton Medical Group, which I hadn’t used because to be honest I hadn’t worked out what they were. Was it health insurance? Just particular clinics? We got no documentation with them and to be honest I’d completely forgotten all about them in about week two of being here, until last week when I got a new wallet and switched everything over. So I phoned them for an appointment. It turns out they are walk-in clinics, but we got seen fairly quickly and the doctor was thorough and kind and very nice to B. She said everything checked out fine and it didn’t look like Dengue fever (which is a big problem this time of year) and gave us some medication for her queasiness and also to keep the fever down (two different ones, depending on whether the fever was above 39.5*C or below). And you know, even with the medicine, there was no charge.

It might be nice to have a regular doctor we see regularly, someone who will do regular health checks etc, but not $400 a pop nicer! The moral of the story is: always check out the stuff you’re given, and USE it!

So. B is not quite 100% but by Wednesday afternoon she was climbing over me like a monkey so she’s back at school. And I’m getting sick of lying around which is hopefully a good sign. It has been so frustrating to lose this whole week, especially when I was feeling so positive and energised from our holiday, although it does explain why the energy faded so quickly last week! Right now I am itching to fling open all the windows and doors and purge the sickness from our house.

(David, of course, has not got sick, because he is a well-hard superhuman, at least according to him.)

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