When colds go bad...

We had a very scary trip to A&E with Molly last week.

She had been a bit miserable for a couple of days with a cough and a cold and on the Monday night she had a very high temperature and was plainly unwell. We called NHS Direct in the middle of the night and took her to see the doctor in the morning. He just said that he thought it was a virus and that we should be able to manage her temperature with Calpol and Nurofen. We were off to Cheshire that day to the funeral of Len Webster (one of my great friends from Bar School). Molly was a bit subdued all day but her temperature stayed reasonably low. We stayed in a hotel overnight and that night she became very hot again and we continued to treat her as suggested by the doctor. The next day she was clearly unwell. She became floppy and listless and the medicine failed to bring her temperature down. On the way back home she was getting worse and worse so we decided to take her to A&E. A very wise plan, as it turned out.

When we arrived at A&E, the triage nurse was very reassuring and essentially told us that everything was going to be fine and that they would soon have her temperature down. We were less confident because we knew that the Calpol Nurofen combination was not working. Within about 20 mins we had gone from "there there, we will soon sort her out with a teaspoon of Calpol" to three specialist paediatric doctors, two nurses, a mobile chest x-ray, a trip to the resucitation room "for just in case", an oxygen mask, saline drip lots of frantic activity and some very worried faces. Her blood O2 was at a mere 75%, her temperature was almost 40 degrees and climbing and she was dangerously unwell. She was admitted to the children's ward and thankfully the rehydration and oxygen worked quite quickly to bring her temperature down and her blood O2 back to 100%. They kept her in overnight and until the early evening on Wednesday. We then had to go back again on the Thursday morning just to get the final blood test results which were all fine. Apparently, it was just a very very nasty viral infection.

She still has a dreadful cough and a cold, but otherwise is well on the mend.

To say we were all a bit worried would be a massive understatement.