Emergency Room Series - Why Wait?

Really, why do people wait till they're about to give up before they visit the hospital?. 

Some go as far as mixing and drinking all sorts of herbal concoctions and end up causing more damage than good. Sometimes its really not a matter of money, because sometimes, even the well-to-do are no different. Ever since I started practising, I've heard of unbelievable and inhumane concoctions that people take, thinking it would make them get better. From cow urine to tree backs to horse blood. I just heard of a new one.

So this woman runs into the ER, she was screaming and crying all over the place. She held an unresponsive child. The child was about 1 year old and the child was limp. The mother kept screaming 'my baby is not breathing, my baby is not breathing' At first we thought the child was only convulsing but when the doctors noticed there was no pulse or respiratory effort, we knew the child had gone into cardiac arrest. 

CPR commenced for about 30minutes afterwards. Oxygen was given, the child was ambu-bagged. The oxygen saturation was so poor, about 8%, which could even be taken as the residual tissue oxygen level that is found in a fresh corpse. Nevertheless, the doctors did their best. We took samples to run tests even as the CPR continued. We gave adrenaline and every other injection that is usually given in cardiac arrests but we got no response.

 It was time to stop because the child wasn't coming around. The child was dead, most likely before arrival at the hospital. The mother was informed and was consoled by her sister who came with her. She cried non-stop and kept shaking her child to wake up, I hate scenes like that because it makes you want to cry but you just can't. The child was cleaned and The mother was told to strap the baby with a wrapper on her back home. 

She was told to do this because she came with a public bus and she might raise suspicion in the bus if she carries the dead baby in her arms. So she strapped her child to her back so it would look like the child was sleeping. It was a very sad thing to watch a mother do. 

When asked what had happened prior presentation, she said the child had been running a fever and she initially gave paracetamol syrup but when the fever didn't subside she gave the child goat milk to drink! Goat milk? I thought. A doctor even asked 'madam you mean goat milk? like goat that does meeehn, meeehn kind of goat, the one with horn? 

She said thats what her tribe gives, fresh goat milk, for fever or illnesses and it works sometimes. How would you give a 1year old child unprocessed milk to drink. Goat milk for that matter, milk that contains millions of bacteria!

Anyways, because we had already taken blood samples, it had to be followed up. Lo and behold, everything came out fine except that the child had infection. Not just infection, very very very severe infection, we call it septicemia. Its like when the body is so full of all sorts of bacteria and sometimes viral microorganisms, so much that it consumes the immune system. Some call it blood poisoning. 

The white blood cell count was 42,000! I had and have never seen an adult with that level of infection that survives, let alone a child. It could be that the child had a minor infection but the goat milk or whatever they gave the child made it worse. 

You need to be careful of what you give your child as first aid. What does milk have to do with anything? What tribe can that be? Who are those inventing all these nonsense? Asides the fact that I don't encourage people to self-medicate. Every mother should have a bottle of paracetamol syrup at home. If your child doesnt get better by the next day, visit an hospital!