cough, splutter, hack, hack

Ok, there is one thing worse than looking after sick children when you are sick. It is looking after well children when you are sick. The boys are up and running at full speed. They are bored of the TV, snakes and ladders and making train tracks. They want to do stuff, fun stuff, stuff that involves balls, running, screaming loudly and jumping on each other. I want to crawl back under the duvet and drink Lemsip (or my new discovery Hot Tylenol). Rock on Monday. They are going to nursery to soak up some of that excess energy.

Although we took the boys to the Doctor, both D and I are not that keen on going ourselves. We are a little worried at the casualness at which antibiotics are subscribed. Adam did have a bonafide ear infection for which I can see that antibiotics are necessary but D was given precautionary antibiotics just in case the lurgy got any worse. We have also been taken aback by the lack of instructions regarding the antibiotics. I'm used to knowing exactly how much to take and for how long. Here we've just been given a bottle and told to get on with it. We've enlisted the help of GP friends back in the UK and the internet to make sense of the 5 different types of medicine we now have on our shelves.

Still everyone is on the road to recovery, and not a moment too soon. It doesn't take away from the fact that since we have been in Bosnia we have been remarkably well - only 2 viruses in 6 months. This is a family record which I am delighted about and a considerable improvement to our more usual sickly state in the UK.

Doctors and antibiotics

All good things have to come to an end. Realistically, our run without having to make a trip to the Doctors was never going to last. The boys (and D so it is obviously a male thing) have been laid low with a stonkingly high temperature and hacking cough. Temperatures were responding to Calpol and Calprufen, but they were too high for me to be comfortable with, so I bundled my poorly males up and we made our first proper trip to the doctor that we had found way back in August.

It was a drop in clinic, we didn't have to make an appointment and we were seen in a few minutes. Quite refreshing after the NHS queues and battles. We did have to pay (still a shock to our fairly spoilt NHS coddled systems) but it was only 15KM (about £7.50) per visit.The Doctor smiled at the kids, took their temps, looked in their ears and throats, diagnosed flu and promptly dished out about 5 different forms of antibiotics. We are more used to a fairly robust NHS doctor who only prescribed antibiotics if you were dying and 'most definitely not for flu which is a virus and therefore unaffected by antibiotics' so we were surprised, but when in Rome/Tuzla...

Still they have sorted out the slight ear infection Adam had, the temps seem to be under control and I'm hopeful that life will be back to normal by Monday.

In the meantime the weather is dreadful so I don't feel too guilty about snuggling up with the boys and a couple of good dvds of an afternoon.