Just listen to the parents and also, although they are not medically trained, but because they know your children, know their children you know it’s a good indicator. So no, I think just to provide care in a way that it support, a little bit, you know, a pat on the shoulder or, or just asking how are you and how are you coping. Just a little thing, nothing to do with medicine, but just kind of acknowledging their presence and their worries, and just a little support and then the parents will I think work better with you as well.

A bit of human?

Mm. The human touch yeah definitely yeah. Yeah.

Do you think that there’s been like an impact on your older son with you having to go to hospital and things like that, and as you said

Yeah.

do you take him with you or do you?

Yeah I mean I’ve, I think you know most of the time has been lucky that either my husband has been on his way home or has been home or been sleeping and I’ve woken him up to go to hospital with the other one. I think the older one sometimes feels a bit left out because obviously the younger one is getting a lot of attention, whether it’s from me or the doctors, or everybody’s fussing over, and when your child is very ill and the other one isn’t although I do try to think of him and sort of get him involved and say well would you help your brother to you know get him a drink or give him a drink or give a cuddle or something. It, yeah they do feel a bit left out.

Yeah when, when the children are ill I use my annual leave.

Right.

To look after, obviously I don’t, we don’t get any paid leave to look after the children. Obviously if we’re half the way through a day there’s an emergency and you have to attend, you can go home and, and that’s fine, but the following day you either take unpaid leave or annual leave. What we’ve done that yeah I use my annual leave to be home with, with them which means then that I haven’t got annual leave actually, to go on holiday. So there’s been a few years now we haven’t had enough days left for holiday. So this year, for yeah there was financial impact as well that I have wanted to go to see my family in [Country] where I’m from and I had to take unpaid leave to be able to go there because I didn’t have any holiday left. So then I guess that makes your life even harder that although I’m not off from work anymore than my colleagues but then it seems like when you quite regularly have to take time off that you are not there, but they are using the same amount of days than they do, they just take it as a holiday. I take them to look after ill children. Yeah. It’s a bit of a juggle. Sometimes it’s, I’m lucky that my husband works in shifts so he might be home on, you know, Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday anyway, so he can look after the children when they are ill, which he does a lot. So he’s, we share and then he’s taken annual leave from work to look after the children and his employer gives him a few days a year to look after children when they’re poorly. Whereas mine doesn’t so but overall then we’ll just have to juggle.

Well obviously or it’s always you hear that you shouldn’t have too many antibiotics but you sort of sort of build-up resistance. But then again in my opinion if you need them you need them, and, and I don’t think the GP’s would prescribe them just for the sake of it, and, and where we also quite often do this talk, discuss with my GP whether we want to wait a few more days or start the course straight away, I think you know if you need antibiotics and if my children need it then I’m quite happy to give that to them. So yeah no problems having antibiotics prescribed to them, that’s fine.

And I guess you know, why my older son, different medical issues than to wheeziness, but he for his first two years pretty much had a course of antibiotics every day, not every day, every month. So yeah so he got prescribed pretty much once a month antibiotics. But then I did appreciate that he needed it. So yes he might have built up a bit of a tolerance but then again you know his condition would have not got better without it, so although I was concerned a little bit I still gave the antibiotics to him because obviously they needed it so.

No, I mean obviously I would try to avoid if you know, let’s say if he’s been invited to a birthday party and you know that half of them are really bad with the cold or sort of, well cold I guess cos if they had the flu they hopefully wouldn’t bring their children to parties, but I have sometimes decided not to go to a birthday party just to avoid him getting you know a new episode just because I know that his immune system is quite low and he tends to pick these things. Winter time trying to avoid play, play centres, indoor play centres are things where you know that sort of where the germs will sort of yeah, but I still try to live as normal a life as I can, and for him to be able to live as normally as possible, and try not to avoid places. But at the same time sort of, oh it’s autumn now and it’s, you know that it’s getting worse so if you can avoid places that it’s most likely to come in contact with lots of children and potentially people with colds and flu then I’ll stay home.

But balancing with the other children, your work and your home life my husband works in shifts, so then trying to take that in consideration, or say when we need to go to hospital in the middle of the night, I’ve got two children and my husband’s working, I’m home on my own. Then trying to find somebody in the middle of the night to come to your house or you take the child with you, or try to get your husband home. And if it’s emergency you know it can be emotionally quite stressful and stressful in general.

I think it’s monitoring the symptoms and, and obviously you know if they pull their ribs in and, and, and you can see from here in the throat and, and with their stomach. My son often when he’s really bad you know starts shifting shoulders every time he’s breathing in. It is, it’s just I don’t know I guess it, it is still looking at the symptoms and you know you own child quite well, and I did also buy a little oxygen monitor, the sort of Sats meter, cos we always you get discharged from hospital if, if the oxygen levels are certain amount or above, so then for me that’s good indication that if I can look after him with the inhalers at home and the oxygen levels are high enough then I’m more relaxed and confident to stay home. And obviously if we put the maximum dosage of medication I’ve been told I can give home and it’s still, he’s struggling then obviously I would then go to hospital, that’s for peace of mind for me whether it’s the right or wrong thing to do I don’t know. But it, I like to work from, I know the facts and then I decide where I go from, and so far it’s been working quite well and my consultant was quite happy with it.

But the latest one that he’d had you know a cold or, or flu, and also a chest infection and he’d had antibiotics and sort of inhalers and everything. But even despite all the medication and antibiotics he wasn’t getting any better. I’d been sort of looking, assessing him throughout the night, umming and ahhing whether I should go back to the doctors, cos obviously he’d already seen the doctor the previous day. And then in the morning I think it was seven o’clock, six, seven o’clock I then rang to the 111 to try to get an appointment first thing when the after-hours where I live, that’s that particular surgery opens up, and, and then based on how I described of his symptoms they decided that it sounded more urgent, that we needed to go for medical attention straightaway rather than going to see the doctor, and go that way. But it’s, again it’s, it’s very laboured breathing, sort of ribs going in, and, and you can sort of hear it that they are struggling. And you, they just seem quite unwell. My son does poorly very well, so even though when he’s very struggling breathing and he’s very poorly he’s still very active and talkative and quite alert. So it’s really difficult cos sometimes I’ve had the doctor to see him or the ambulance people, and they say, Oh, oh is this the patient? And then oh, and then after when they’re doing their sort of paperwork that they need to complete before they are allowed to leave, then they actually realise you know take readings and Ah, he is really poorly and we’ve been blue-lighted to hospital. So it’s, it’s very tricky.

Well the first few times when, when my younger son went to hospital and having the breathing difficulties he is not used to having a mask on his face, or given the nebulisers so he was very distressed and obviously struggling and screaming and being upset and scared, and then me never, I have never been sort of giving him inhalers or nebulisers. So then for me to learn how to do and actually you have to quite strongly restrain them, so sometimes there might have been five of us, five grown-ups to hold him still enough to give him the medication that he needs to be able to breathe. So that’s very, very stressful, when you see your, your child struggling and people pinning him down and then with the time he’s learned this is what happens, if I can’t breathe they put this on, and so he has a more relaxed approach to it then which makes it much easier for me to deal with.

But yeah, yeah, it is stressful and it’s scary and frightening but again it comes with experience that then when you have to do it all the time you sort of, you know what to do, how to help them and they learn Okay, I’ll have this treatment and then I’ll feel better. So then you just learn, learn the way of being in a hospital if you like.

The hospital, with my younger son, so it’s just been the last few years the hospitalisation. Normally we, we have been in a room that has I think six beds, sometimes there isn’t any other children, sometimes there is but there’s your hospital bed and they have this sofa chair that folds up, oh no folds down to a bed, and normally the nurses at some point in the evening they come and pull it out for you. And then in the morning they help you to sort of put it back as a chair, obviously the children get fed and parents don’t. There is a room where you can make teas and coffees and there is a fridge where you can bring your own food and label it. But it is quite tricky actually to just keep yourself going and feed yourself because if you’ve got a very ill child and you are with them you can’t really walk to the hospital canteen to get yourself food. And if you haven’t got a partner or friends who can help you, then it, well obviously you can get a bit hungry. But then I’ll always be offered some toast and then the food my son doesn’t eat, I’ll pinch his dinner [laughs].