A fever and its effects.

When you are so familiar with almost every kind of illness, you wouldn’t panic at all when something new pops up. You will be like “I have seen most of this. Let us see what happens, next”. But imagine a person who hasn’t been attacked even by a common cold for past 3-4 years. And when he is attacked by “viral fever”, all of a sudden, the situation turns out of control mainly because of the sudden ‘panic’ that sets in his mind. As we know most of the illness is related to how we treat them with your mind. If you panic, the illness gets an upper hand and it takes its worse form.

Ok, now coming to the point, the person I was referring to is my husband. Last Friday when he told about a cold coming up, I thought that it would be gone with some anti-cold tablets and paracetamol. But it didn’t. It upgraded itself into severe fever, chesty cough in the night which almost blocked his breathing not to mention the running nose. But the main problem was the panic he faced. He couldn’t simply accept that he was having fever.

As it was Friday evening, I couldn’t take him to the doctor till Monday. Here ‘doctor-on-call’ is only for emergency, and that means you must be nearly dying to qualify for it. First you have to call your GP and they will transfer you to the ‘doctor on call’ and you have to convince them that you are dying. And they will decide whether you are ‘really’ dying or not. And then they will call the doctor at home and tell him/her about your symptoms. And if he is willing to come, they will call you back and give you the permission to come to ‘doctor-on-call’. This is the procedure. I know it sounds crazy to prove that you are dying to get emergency treatment. But that is how the funny medical system here works.

So, we had to wait till Monday to see our GP. Now I had Saturday and Sunday to visit the pharmacist and do some ‘self-treatment’ to my husband. Also he suddenly started asking for the most impossible things like ‘kanji’(rice-porridge), pappadam, chukku-pepper-coffee, vicks etc. It was impossible at the moment because, we didn’t have any of these at home then. Also I had no idea from where to get whole pepper and chukku (dried ginger) and pappadam. He didn’t want ground pepper and fresh ginger.

Now Saturday I began my hunting for these odd objects at 1 pm. To my utter horror, TESCO re-assembled all their products on that day, after 3 years!!! . I was completely lost in that huge super-market. After 3 hrs of patient hunting, I found whole black pepper, cloves and dried-ginger-powder in the thai-spices aisle. After that I went to Boots(pharmacy) and got all the vicks, anti-cold tablets and paracetamol. [Here there is a restriction on paracetamol, that at a time you can buy only one pack].

When I came back at 6 pm, I had to make chukku-coffee, basmati rice kanji, dried coconut (the only kind available here) -chammanthi (chutney). With Lemsip (lemon-paracetamol drink) every 4 hrs, chukku-coffee every hour, fresh kanji-chutney three times- i was running all around, not to tell about the constant coaxing to make him eat tablets/food.

This was my very first experience with a feverish person. At home, when amma had fever, she would take food and tablets without any complaint. We just have to give her-that’s all. No complaints like “This kanji doesn’t have enough water. I wont eat this”. And I never expected husbands/men to be this cranky, when feverish. I was exhausted too much by Sunday evening. Constant running up and down every half an hr for coffee and kanji made my back pain horrible. Monday we went to our GP and my husband was given antibiotics.

Now with all these medicines he turned on his crankiest form.

“I don’t want to eat tablets."

"I don’t want to eat."

"I want kanji with more water and less rice."

"I won’t drink Lemsip, its bitter."

"You put too much ginger and less sugar on coffee”.

Now what will I do when a grown-up man behaves like this??

Some how… I can only say somehow, by Thursday his fever subsided and now only traces of his crankiness are left.

And I learned one big lesson. To be sick is very simple when compared to the effort, patience and stamina needed to look after a sick person when he is cranky!

Does everyone behave like this, when sick?

This play list has some old malayalam film songs which are my favourite! enjoy....

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