Hand, Foot and Mouth Disease

Kayrin caught HFMD over the long Deepavali weekend and what agony it was for the little girl. My heart breaks. Ulcers lined the inner sides of her cheeks, dotted her tongue and were on her upper and lower lips. She cried out in pain everytime water came in contact with her.
It all started with Kayrin telling me over the phone, as I was driving home, that she was feeling sick. She threw up as soon as I arrived home at about 8 p.m. We brought her to a pediatrician's clinic (not her regular one), and she threw up twice more at the clinic. Suspecting it was stomach flu, the doc noted that she has lots of ulcers in her mouth plus quite a high temperature of about 39 Celsius. But with no spots on her hands or feet, he said it wasn't HFMD.
On Saturday, when showering her, I cleaned her tongue. Kayrin screamed in pain. That was really awful. Her fever seems to have abated that day. But by Sunday morning, she was in such agony that we brought her into the A&E at Sunway Hospital. The doc gave OralAid, a lignocaine mouth drip, paracetamol and told us to give her warm salt gargle. Wrong thing when her ulcers were so huge. Poor Kayrin didn't want anymore of the rise after I forced it on her twice. By Sunday evening, she had refused all food and drink. Her grandmother made her way home to feed Kayrin. That night, reading on the Web about HFMD, I realized that dehydration was the biggest enemy.
To feed Kayrin water, which she refused to even sip, we used a plastic syringe and `pumped' water into her mouth throughout the night. Deepavali (a Monday) was spent at home, catching up on sleep. By then, Kayrin was scratching her toes a second night.
Come Tuesday morning, I drove Kayrin to her usual pediatrician, Dr. Wong May Foong, who immediately diagnosed Kayrin as having HFMD and pointed out the spots/vesicles on her fingers and toes.
At the clinic was also Kayrin's classmate, Law Yen Kay, who also complained of pain in the mouth. The two of them were among the three who have caught HFMD in the class of Sakura B at Tadika Prima Ceria.
I've gone really paranoid as a result of Kayrin catching HFMD. I asked Ida the maid to wipe all doorknobs with soap, constantly clean the fridge handle, especially after Shaw Feng showed me an article on dirty hands and door handles.
Yesterday, Wednesday, Kayrin started asking for food again. A good sign. And she was ordering me to scold her daddy for being a bad guy. I shouldn't have married a bad guy, she said.

Overcoming Cough

Very happy that I'm almost winning the battle with this cough in a short period. Two weeks. Short for me because I've often battled cough for months. And this round, what works? I can't quite tell, but here's a list of what I did, with much encouragement, or scolding ;), from Shaw Feng.
1) Gargle warm salt water, more than three times a day during the worst of the cough.
2) Use Sterimar nasal spray morning and night.
3) Eat no deepfried food, no pears and no chicken and eggs. All advice from the TCM doctor. And yes, eat no vegetables during dinner.
4) Take garlic pearls, on the advice of colleague Ryan.
5) Get lots of sleep.
6) Avoid travel to Singapore for crazy weekend party (best decision made for me by SF this round).
7) Continue with gym routine as per usual. Actually, I stepped up my exercise quota, going for a second yoga class in a week.

Thank God for this quick recovery. And I avoided Singulair too. whoo-hoo!

Blast From the Past

Bruce Springsteen's `Dancing in the Dark' came on air this morning and I resolved to look up the lyrics when I drove into the office. That means going onto Google, typing `Dancing in the Dark lyrics', and pop here they are.
But I remember the days when I wanted lyrics. It means playing the cassette on dad's Aiwa player, with pen and paper ready, and fingers quick enough to go on the stop/pause-rewind-play button! Stop to write, then replay for bits I've missed or couldn't catch, then play again.
And if I wanted to listen to a song, it means calling in to Double RB the Australian radio station broadcasting out of Telok Air Tawar in Butterworth, or writing to Janet Ambrose of Radio Four or Blue Channel before that.
These days, it's not even about buying the CDs. It's "Sweetheart, please download for me" or You-tubing it.
What a change two decades made.

To Exercise or Not

When a cold strikes, I lie low. No exercising. No hitting the gym. Just meander around in the office and feel miserable.
This round, I've decided to try otherwise. That means still crawling to the gym, sweating it out on the cardio machines for about 20 minutes, my usual. OK, may be I've cut back a bit on the weights. Let's see how I fare this round. A longer recovery? A shorter one?
What do you do when you catch a cold? Break from your usual routine?

Short Break

Melaka always seemed a boring place to me. Too commercialized. Recently, however, I've been wanting to see Melaka again. I haven't explored enough. We took the opportunity to do that on Oct. 1-2, the Raya weekend. It coincided with Heng Hou and Ai Wei being in Melaka too. Ai Wei, whom we met for the first time, is a Malaccan and gamely took us to Amy's for Nyonya food and to Min Sheng Hygienic Ice Cream.
Amy's served up wonderful chicken pong-teh, we were told but they'd run out by the time we got there for lunch at about 1 p.m. Only complaint was that food was slow in being served. Kayrin kept asking for the arrival of food, a rarity.
Min Sheng's cendol was a real nice one to tuck into on a hot day. I'd say it's the best cendol I'd gotten in the southern part of Peninsular Malaysia.
Being in Melaka when a quarter of Malaysia and half of Singapore descended on it could be quite taxing if you aren't from KL. well, KL-ites have seen worse. What's worse than being stuck in a 500 meter underground tunnel leading from the KLCC carpark for an hour?
Kayrin, after many hours of enduring me pointing out ancient buildings and monuments to her, had this to say about Melaka: Why is everything so old in Melaka?

Princess for a Day

Kayrin saw a temporary studio at the lobby of the Giant hypermarket one weekend last month, when we were out shopping. She was adamant she had her glamour shots taken! We had to make our way back to that studio as it was too long a queue that day. Heck, I wouldn't be dragged into such shots as a kid. Well, my one and only time doing such shots were for the wedding in 2001. I must say I had fun. Now, to figure out how to upload those shots into digital beings and get them up here.
In the meantime, here's Kayrin playing princess. Shaw Feng and I were thoroughly amused she was so game at sitting through the experience.

Crocs

Kayrin got her first pair of Crocs from Singapore in 2005, before they were launched in Malaysia. Her pair, in fuchsia pink, didn't last her very long as she outgrew them quite fast. But that was the start of her love affair with Crocs. We've bought her no other shoes since then. Getting her second pair, the turquoise ones in Penang's Komtar, and the subsequent red Mary Janes in Isetan, we've gone on to accumulate pairs and pairs from her from Hong Kong, when I travelled there for my team meeting in 2007 and discovered that they are at least 30% cheaper there.
Crocs are great for kids. They are washable, and seeing how quickly kids dirty their shoes, they are a wonder. And there's no need to wear socks too. As a parent, that's a jump in glee for me. No need to struggle with finding a pair of socks and making the kid stick her feet out calmly while I'm already running late.