Seeing Red
I don't recall exactly when I last had conjunctivitis because I've not had it since secondary school.
But recently - last week, my left eye appeared red, but was
neither itchy nor painful. How innocent
I was for thinking “nah, it must be just due to allergy” just because I was
sneezing nocturnally for a few days. Prior to this, Aaron and my husband were down with conjunctivitis for about a week.
To further aggravate troubles, I innocently put on contact lenses as if I was alright (I use them on weekdays
for convenience and practicality and vanity reasons, but since my
eyesight is not too bad, I go without glasses when I’m indoor e.g. at home and
not in need of clear distance vision). Vanity must be so intoxicating that it took away my common sense to realise the risk - so what if I've washed my hands?
By the time I started taking medical leave, both my eyes
looked red and the left eye appeared worse than the right eye, as in being more
painful, more swollen, and more watery. The lymph node around the left hand side of my jaw was also swollen and painful - so it's clearly infection.
"One big one small"
Today is the 6th day I’m having red eyes. But unfortunately, it looks as if I’ll be
forced to be away from work for the whole of this week.
The usual case once you start school
As if “sudah jatuh ditimpa tangga”, as much as I wanted to
stay at home without going out to public places with red eyes, I was
nevertheless forced to go out today when Alvin is sick again. Generally, it’s the usual sickness that affects many school-going children. But then, it's chest infection again, oh no!
When entering Dr Hew’s room at Columbia Asia Hospital Cheras this morning with Alvin and my husband, the first question from him was about my eyes, followed by
about Alvin. I feel very bad going out
with red eyes – mainly because conjunctivitis is very infectious and painful, and secondly because of embarrassment.
Speaking of schooling and catching illnesses, while I am not
concerned by the frequency of sickness, what bothers me is the “magnitude” of
Alvin sickness due to his sensitive airways, highly likely due to the fact that he’s a very premature baby.
Privy or not, it matters
But what disheartens me most are unsolicited (though well-intended) comments from
parties who are not privy to Alvin’s case. While I am grateful that Alvin has progressed generally well from the day he’s born as in not having major issues
related to prematurity, he has a little extra path to walk through before he
can be the same as most of his full-term-born counterparts.
For instance, he has some developmental delay in relation
to language and fine motor. Let's take a simple example, he only starts to speak now at the age of 4 and may not be able to
answer a question like “Where is Ken Ken?” without giving you a blur-blur expression. That’s generally the
diagnosis of developmental paediatrician Dr Raja.
Back to unsolicited comments, I frequently received remarks
like “I don’t understand why you don’t send your son to nursery earlier, so
that’s why he’s still not talking at 3”…. Or “Of course he’s late, because you're stubborn”.
The reasonable man test
Given a choice, do you
prefer to let your child have an early start, or do you prefer to overprotect
your child at the expense of his development?
The word “over-protection” is a taboo to me. Given a choice, I wouldn’t mind Alvin starting
school earlier than 4 years although it's not necessary to
hurry. But let’s take a look at his
state of readiness first before divulging further.
The fact that a 4 year old child can have chest infection
i.e. pneumonia twice within a period of 4 months which also coincides with upon
entering pre-school, should be stark enough to spark a concern. So imagine if he’s only 2 and if he were to
battle all the infections within his nursery – can anyone imagine what sort of stuff
he’ll go through? If it’s a typical full-term baby, then of course the story may differ.
Moral of the story, which I also frequently remind myself is
that I’ll never make comments or speculations about how people raise their children. In most cases, parents have solid reasons when
they depart from the norm in certain matters. Unless the full story is known, please
refrain from comments on why is so and so doing this and that.
Ahh… in any event, I am relieved that at this stage, Alvin does not have to
be hospitalised yet... but don't know about later. With an active conjunctivitis,
rooming-in with Alvin in the ward will be one of the worst nightmares around, regardless of which hospital.
Conclusion
Sometimes, I am curious to know what others at home think whenever
Alvin falls terribly sick, although the logical side of me would think – why care
about what others think as long as you’ve not done anything wrong? Well, that's easier said than done. And beneath my ice-cold appearance, I am flooded with lots of guilt and even self-anger.
What’s just a cough to other children may be more than
just a cough for Alvin. Sometimes too, I blame myself for bringing pain not
only to Alvin, but also to the rest of the good family when they get distressed
seeing a young child cough, cough and cough, as in last night from 1.00 am to
6.00 am, a few times in every 10 minutes, and had absolutely no appetite for the past 3 days.
Call me silly and lousy, I regret the very premature delivery of Alvin
although there was nothing that I could have done to prevent it back then
because it was my first time and thus, I did not know that I’m having a defect
called cervical incompetence.
On my red eyes, I wonder when will normalcy resume? On another note, I am wondering too if I can have enough will-power to ditch my vanity for good as part of minimising risks towards my eyes in the future...
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