5 days 4 nights

That's how long I have been in Pantai Medical Centre children's ward C525.

Amin's been purging for 6 days from Saturday 20th January 2007. We have gone to 2 different clinics to seek for medication and in the end, on the morning of 25th January, I took Amin to see Dr. Rasool here at the clinic at my workplace and without wasting any more time and medicine, he referred us to Dr. Azam, Paediatrician Specialist at Pantai Hospital, who then immediately warded us.

Amin had actually been on and off purging and experiencing high fever especially at nights, for the past few weeks, since early January, but have been able to recover after 2 to 3 days. I have visited the doctors at two of our local clinics at home where they gave him antibiotics and fever medication. All the medicines have finished but the fever and purging came back the following week but this time, it got worse. The purging continued constantly almost after 3 hours of meal intake and on 24th Jan, the fever came back and stayed for good, despite how much medicine I gave Amin. That's when I knew that I had to take Amin to a different clinic, to seek for another opinion, and hooray to Dr. Rasool for immediately able to diagnose Amin with viral infection of Gastroenteritis and identified that Amin was already dehydrated.

I have never seek treatment at Pantai Hospital before and neither did any of my family members, hence, we were new to absolutely everything. I was in for a surprise. It's so unbelievably efficient. The admission registration and General Letter (GL) acquiring process were carried out flawlessly by the staffs there and within 15 minutes, we were already in our room and several nurses and lab technicians were ready to take a few samples of Amin's blood for analysis. The lab technician prick one of Amin's finger and squeezed a few drops of blood from it. I knew that it didn't hurt so much but Amin was crying out loud, most probably due to the surprised of the sudden needle prick.

Dr. Azam came in a few minutes later to put the Intravenous (IV) Access Device in Amin. He inserted a tube into Amin's veil located on his right hand. And this time Amin cried helplessly on and on and on even long after the process ended. It must have hurt him so much although Dr. Azam had successfully found the large vein and only inserted the needle in one attempt.

Throughout 5 days and 4 nights, Amin was fed with 4 bottles of salt/glucose, 3 doses of 2 types of antibiotics through IV drip, and I lost count of the number of medicines he had to swallow every 4 hours. His urine and stools sample were taken for analysis and his diapers outcome were recorded each time. Dr. Azam also identified that there was redness in Amin's throat and phlegm in his lungs, hence he also assigned nebulizer treatment be done three times a day.

There's no words that can express how I felt at this moment. I just kept praying to Allah for things to get better. I'm very grateful that Amin was very understanding, patient and tolerable. It was as if he had grown out of his age. He was such a good boy. He didn't even attempted to take the IV tube off, although he did told the nurse to do so (in his own language- of course). He refused to swallow the medicine, hence we had to force them into his throat (mommy so sorry baby! but we had to do it, or else, how will you ever get any better?) Anyway, it was a miracle that he was able to sleep with such minimal movements and able to control his hand from pressing the IV tube.

His fever subsided only on the third day and that was after the doctor gave him his 3rd and final doses of antibiotics. His purging getting less on the fourth day and Dr. Azam stopped all medications, including the IV drip and put him under observation on the 5th day. A few drops of blood was taken early in the morning and by 6pm Dr. Azam gave us the green light to go home. Syukur Alhamdulillah..

Million thanks to both of my parents for accompanying me day and night without failure. I couldn't have made it without your support, especially with my husband out station during this period. Thanks to all my relatives and family friends who came to visit and thank you for the doa'. May Allah bless you always.

p/s: I made a nazar to fast for one day as Amin got better.