When you need medical care...

I often gather my meds and stuff onto one tray so it's not scattered everywhere.

Today is day 4 of Spencer's fevers.  He started Friday afternoon with a temp of over 103 degrees. I've been keeping a journal of all of the times I've taken his temperature, all of the medications I've given him in the amounts he received.  This is helpful when we need to talk to a doctor OR to see if his fevers are cyclical (which could indicate malaria or worse).  Last night I emailed 3 docs back home but none of them are probably at work since it's the weekend.  Tabs that are up on my browser this morning include how to effectively do the saline nasal spray, one on fevers, one on Ibuprofen dosages, and one google page on which antibiotics are used for sinus infections in children.  (Just doing the research...) This morning his fever was still going at just under 103 which has been normal for the past 4 days so I decided to call a doctor.  There are 2 western doctors and a nurse with a ton of experience in our region so I tried all 3.  I could reach NONE of them, so I called my mom.  

As I was Skyping with her, one of the docs I'd tried to call called me back!  I gave her the history and she said we should try antibiotics - not that there were any guarantees and in fact there were indications that it WOULDN'T work, but there isn't really anything else left to try.  SO - I gave her Spencer's weight (in KG and in LBS- info I try to keep current so that I don't have to weigh them in the middle of the night when they're feeling awful) and she told me which medicine I needed to get and the range of mg of meds he needed per kilo per day - divided by 2 dosages.  

Armed with that information, I headed off to the drugstore.  I approached the counter and told the lady what medicine I needed.  She looked like she understood and headed to the back.  She returned with a box, inside was a sealed bottle with white powder in it.  She showed me on the label where it said how to reconstitute it to the correct strength.  It didn't look like it would make a lot of medicine - so I used her calculator to figure out that if he needs 500 mg of the medicine 2 times a day, he needs 7000 mg in a week.  She and I did a number of different "figurings" on her calculator, then I paid the 67,000 Rupiah (just over $6), took the bottle and went home.  

When I got home, I started the calculations again - and realized that the bottle she sold me would only give Spencer 3 doses - a day and a half of medicine - and that I am going to have to go back and get FOUR more bottles - if she will sell it to me - since I don't have a prescription, only directions from my doctor friend that I scribbled while we were on the phone.  The saga continues...