I Cannot Survive!

The above three words were repeatedly uttered by my six-year-old as he clutched his head with both hands as a terrible headache ripped through his head. These three words and others with similar effects such as "How can I live like this?" and "Is the pain ever going to go away?".

Well, I must say Joshua is a bit of a drama king. And since he has a rather low threshold on pain, he tends to whine excessively when he's in pain. What's a 5 on a scale of 10 for most people is probably a 9 to him. So when he developed a bad headache a couple of days ago, he sounded as if he needed to be rushed to the hospital.

Which was exactly what his grandfather thought. You see, on Tuesday, just five minutes before the last school bell went off, he started screaming in pain in his classroom. I wasn't aware of that though I was already at his school with his grandparents (who are here for a long visit) and his sister Joanne. I saw his teacher Miss McDonald coming out from the classroom quite frantically but didn't know she was looking for me. She didn't see me and went back into the class.

I only realised Joshua's predicament when Rosemary - Joshua's best friend Alexander's mum - saw me and quickly told me about the situation. Naturally, I rushed to his classroom and found him being comforted by both Miss McDonalds and Mrs Powells, the teacher from the next class. He was crying incessantly, worrying both the teachers.

I know my son. It was probably not as bad as he appeared to be. So I did my best to comfort him and carried him back to the car. At that point, I knew there would be some problems with the grandparents. Joshua is their favourite grandchild and one of them would insist on my doing something extra.

Back in my mind, I knew some Panadol, lots of water and a good rest would do the trick. But no, grandpa kept saying we had to send Joshua to the clinic. I didn't oblige. It was 4pm and you could only get to see a doctor by appointment. By then, I doubt there was any slot left for me for the day as the clinic closed at 5pm. The clinic would, at best, arrange an appointment the next morning. The other option is the Emergency Department of the Box Hill Hospital, an option I found totally ridiculous because you would have to wait for at least 3 hours before any doctor could see you.

So I ignored the old man and drove straight home. Of course, Joshua kept wailing and screaming as if he was on the brink of death. I knew someone wasn't happy with me but I called the shots here. Thankfully, my mother-in-law was here 2 weeks earlier and she'd seen how appointments needed to be made at clinics and how whiny Joshua was when he was down with gastroenteritis. So she backed me up although she was very concerned as well.

Finally we got home (the journey was less than 10 minutes thouth it felt like like 1 hour with all the screaming at the back seat). I got Joshua to swallow a spoonful of Panadol and lots of water. Then I gave him a head rub with some minyak angin. He fell asleep in less than 10 minutes. And he was out for almost 2 hours after that.

By 6.30pm, he woke up and was okay. Good as new. Boy I was glad I didn't kow-tow to some stupid demand. Rushing a kid to a hospital because of a headache? That would be really too much ...