hotter than heck

So...it's been awhile, huh? Well, internet denizens, I have been anxiouser than Maggie next to a locked box of donuts. Seung Yi got a fever a couple of days ago and Phet and I have been taking care of her round the clock since then. I'm happy to report that today she's pretty much back to normal. Her temperature is a non-ludicrous 90-something degrees and she is resting comfortably in her beddie. However, she is cutting her top teeth and she is alternating between pretty relaxed and ANGRY HOT DAMN ANGRY with the universe.

On the first day of the fever, Phet thought she was feeling hot before bed. In the middle of the night Ji woke up and I happened to wake Seung Yi up and felt her head and indeed she did have a temperature; think it was 102 or so. We gave her some tylenol and cooled her down and she seemed mostly ok the next day. But in the late afternoon the fever kicked up again, and by 6 pm it was up past 102. We called Super Doctor Gupta on her cellphone (very nice, doctors answering patient's calls!) and found out that she was at her clinic close to us, so we zoomed over there. The clinic, kind of like the dermatologist's clinic, was on the floor above a bustling market. Not very spinky-spanky, but the doctor is the important thing. And we're not in Thailand anymore! Relievingly, the artwork on her walls was mostly non-disturbing. Nice poster from the Louvre, a few pleasant impressionist paintings. Couple of hideous cubist "masterpieces" but otherwise adequate. As we were sitting in the waiting room, part of a remarkable self-organizing lineup (the receptionist never called anyone; we just went when we knew it was our turn), Seung Yi spewed milk barf all over herself and Phet. Luckily she was just in a diaper, but Phet was not so lucky. He had shorts on. So he was all barfy even after the wipe-up. Dr. Gupta was friendly, thoughtful, and professional as usual. She recommended we keep up what we were doing, but come back if things got worse.

The next day Seung Yi was not bad during the day, but in the evening her fever spiked up again. She crawled around with her white tongue hanging out. We bathed her, dosed her with tylenol, turned the air con on (my baby book said to put it at, like, 21', but we figured the shock of moving from one room at 21' to the next room at 39' would kill us, so we left it at 25') and I got really worried. She finally fell asleep in Phet's arms at 10 and I went to sleep in the living rom. I like sleeping with Ji and SY, but find it hard to relax and sleep if they're sick. At 2 am, I heard Seung Yi crying with Phet. We took her temperature and it was A HUNDRED AND FOUR POINT FIVE. I just about started bawling, but Phet took charge, got her in a bath, we dosed her again with tylenol, and she had a bit to drink, and thankfully went back to sleep again once it had cooled down a tiny bit. Oh my god I was SO scared. Luckily, when she conscious-ified herself once more it was 5 am (I could tell because the birds were chirping but it wasn't light yet) and she was at a near-normal temperature. It was quite funny: she got up in a crawl position and stared at me for about 10 minutes, and I was so tired I just sort of dozed and opened my eyes every few minutes, and there she was still staring at me as if to say "What the HELL was that all about?"

Other than that, things are good here in Delhi. We've had a few nicely overcast days, Phet's busy at work, Ji's finishing up school next Friday, I'm done as of next Wednesday, um, we re-arranged our furniture so there aren't any exposed electrical outlets or sharp marble corners that babies could whack their heads on, we put all of Ji's science stuff into a new-to-us cabinet I bought from some departing French ex-pats, oh yeah and we are getting suuuuper excited about going home for the summer!

[Delhi-25-May-2007]