We had a little scare a few days ago. On the 3rd day of CNY, my eldest, Ben, complained of a headache after watching Word World on tv, and munching on some papadum. Within an hour, he developed a high fever.

That night, he barfed in his sleep and shivered the whole night long as his fever hovered around 38.9 deg C. We rushed him to the pd in the morning, who said that we’ve gotta monitor him for viral meningitis – because when the symptoms of fever and headache come together, that’s quite a serious thing. She would have associated the bright lights from the tv and salt from the papadum as the triggers of the headache, but ruled that out because it came with a fever. She also mentioned that the way to confirm the meningitis diagnosis, if the condition persisted, was to do a lumbar puncture.

I became a neurotic mother who kept scanning his head with a thermometer every hour of the day, and asking him to tell me how painful his headache was. The doc taught me to use my hands to give Ben options to describe the pain – with arms stretched wide as ‘very, very painful’, and with two-finger spacing as ‘a little pain’. I also made him look at his stomach and feet a lot to make sure he had no pain in his neck.

I was very blessed to have the advice of some mommy bloggers from SMB who shared their experience and expertise with me. One of them sent me the link to an article, which helped me monitor Ben less neurotically.

It’s Day 4 today. The high fever is subsiding and hovering around 37.8, and the boy is more or less back to his usual self. He’s been so lethargic and whiny, it’s good he is finally laughing and playing with his siblings.

Thank you, Jesus.

P/S: Ben is vaccinated against bacteria meningitis. Gonna also make sure the other two kids get their Pneumococcal vaccine really soon.