The house was sick. It wasn’t the aged aesthetics. Angus had a cold, his first bad one. It emerged quickly, and we laughed at his husky cry. When it became a cough and his nose began to run, it ruined his sleep and his mood.
We weren’t laughing anymore.
Two days after Angus got sick, Kristine woke from sleep with a sore throat, husky voice and thumping headache. A few days later I felt like I’d been shot in the right ear.
When the whole family is sick, life can be hell. Angus was the worst. He was coughing phlegm. Snot leaked from his nose. Whenever we tried wiping his nose he screamed. We let him scream, because if we didn’t wipe his nose he’d smear snot over his face, in his eyebrows and hair.
Crying became his mantra. He sought us out for help because he didn’t understand what was happening. We couldn’t offer any help, except to hold him.
It broke our hearts to see him like that. Baby Panadol didn’t help. I took him for a swim to cool him down and he slept for an hour in the afternoon. At night he couldn’t sleep longer than an hour. He’d regressed into a newborn. We took turns at comforting him back to sleep.
After a few nights of hell, Angus woke screaming about midnight. He was inconsolable. Kristine brought him to bed and handed him to me. I’ve never felt heat like that from a human body. He was boiling. I stripped him off and sought the comfort of a fan to cool him down.
The following night was worse. Angus was sleeping fitfully, in fifteen minute bursts. He was still leaking snot. At nine he woke in a mad rage. For half an hour he cried pitifully, totally distraught.
His condition was bad enough for a call to 13-HEALTH. I was connected with a nurse. We went through a series of questions to rule out whooping cough and meningococcal. She suggested he simply had a cold then asked about our methods of treatment. ‘Have you self-administered any drugs?’ she asked.
‘We gave him baby panadol and neurofen,’ I said.
‘And why did you give him that?’ she asked.
‘To cool him down because he’s burning up. I took him for a swim to cool off too.’
Her voice was tight. ‘Don’t give him anymore panadol or neurofen. He just has to fight it. Panadol and neurofen just prolong the cold. And don’t put him in the pool to cool him down. All that does is cool his skin and makes his body work harder.’
Angus went to sleep during the phone call. By the time I’d hung up he was in his cot. Kristine and I found each other in a hug.
‘Everything we’ve done is wrong,’ I said. ‘No more panadol and no more pool.’
We were left feeling sorry for Angus, thinking we’d contributed to his prolonged illness by offering comfort. But new parents are always amateurs, and if an adult was sick like that they’d be swimming and taking panadol.
Simply, we were confused, because no one told us what to do when a baby gets a cold. We were guessing, which most parents do.
We were still guessing the following day. He was still a mess with cold. We took turns and trying to extract snot from his nose with a suction tube. The tube barely worked. Angus didn’t want to eat. He was on a milk only diet. Kristine was cooking for him and he was pushing food on the floor.
His whole life had been interrupted by the cold. Ours had too. The routine we’d worked so hard to establish had been ruined.
Most parents we talked to offered sympathy without remedy. They’d all been through it, and worse in some instances. Most had given their children panadol when they had a cold. The parents we talked to, like us, were confused by the advice from 13-HEALTH.
My father Bill wasn’t convinced about the no pool rule. Bill worked in hospitals for years. He wasn’t a clinician but he saw enough injuries and read enough reports to understand basic medicine.
‘Whenever anyone was burning up like that the doctors brought their temperature down,’ Bill said. ‘It’s summer. You’re not putting him in a cold bath.’
I sought the pool when I was a kid and had a bad summer cold. It provided relief. When Angus went into the pool, he relaxed. Afterwards he went to sleep. The nurse said we were prolonging the cold by cooling him down, but he also needed to sleep. Kristine and I agreed on a no pool rule, which lasted until she went out.
I took Angus for a swim. Five minutes later he was asleep. When Kristine came home to a quiet house I confessed.
‘Look at him,’ I said.
She couldn’t argue.
His cold lingered for two weeks. The cough stayed for another month. Whatever kind of cold it was, it took him a long time to fight it.
Kristine was sick for about two weeks, a nagging sore throat and headache. She barely complained. My middle ear infection almost ruined an ASB but I soldiered on, with a lot of complaining. I had mates to entertain.
It took appointments with two different doctors and three different types of medication to fix my infection. My right ear was filled with wax. I was using drops but they weren’t getting through. I’d never had an ear flushed out before. It is excruciating. The doc filled a large syringe with saline fluid and injected it into my ear. I’ve never had a knife in my ear but I know what it feels like.
The doc said the same bug that attacked my ear also attacked Angus and Kristine. Because Kristine and I had already fought monster colds, the bug manifested in her as a sore throat and slotted into my ear. It went at Angus with ferocity, as a traditional cold.
He might’ve had sore ears and a sore throat too. We will never know.
A few years ago, staying with Paul and his family in Melbourne, a case of gastro barged through the family inside a week, afflicting two adults and three kids. Unfortunately I was one of the adults.
The kids got sick first, then Donna got sick. With Paul at work, I looked after his kids while Donna spent the day in bed. The only times she got up was to vomit.
At the time I was thinking, come on Donna, it can’t be that bad. I wasn’t worried about watching the kids, we went to the park for a kick and I enjoyed that. I hadn’t been dreadfully sick like that for years and couldn’t imagine why anyone needed to spend a day in bed.
Four days later I woke early to vomit. I spent the day in bed and missed the grand final parade. I was still crook when West Coast defeated Sydney by a point. I must’ve thrown up twenty times in 36 hours. I’ve been sick like that maybe three times in my life.
I apologised to Donna, for my thoughts. ‘I had no idea that it was that bad,’ I said. Donna laughed at me. ‘I told you it was bad,’ she said. ‘I’ve never spent a day in bed like that.’
It gave me a whole new appreciation of parenthood, and reminded me how resilient Donna was. Somehow Paul missed out on that bug. It seems a miracle that he didn’t get it. I’m still annoyed he didn’t, because he teased me throughout.
When Angus, Kristine and I worked through our first case of sick house, we didn’t sledge each other because we knew there would be many more. When it was over we weren’t running around throwing high fives at each other.
There was another fight to be fought.
As Daniel Geale went through the final preparations for his IBF middleweight defence against Anthony Mundine, we felt like we were in a fight that couldn’t be won.
Angus was ten months old. He was fighting sleep during the day. At night, after being put to bed, he protested just as much, a loud kind of sound.
People suggested tough love.
Tough love wasn’t working…
