My little guy started having fever Thursday morning. He had fever (38-39 degrees Celsius) for most of the day until the next day at six in the afternoon. No cough and colds, no loss of appetite, still bubbly and playful. So we really can’t call it the flu. We brought him to the Pedia Friday morning just to be told that blood tests will not help because fever was just a day old. So if it was Dengue, the test will not come back positive until at least the third day. Today is the third day and Jed has been fever free for twelve hours until another episode of low grade fever came back again at two in the afternoon.
If it was not for the kid on the next block who had Dengue last month, I wouldn’t be as concerned. We don’t have mosquitoes in our home because of our trusty JML pest shield. We got that to get rid of stray roaches and since I bought it a year ago, it did not just get rid of roaches, but millipedes and mosquitoes as well. It was frustrating that our brand new home was infested with millipedes! Now we hardly use anti-mosquito spray anymore, really. This deserves a separate post altogether.
Going back to this Dengue scare, for non-Filipinos, please know that it is not pronounced as “den-goo” as one website claims. It is pronounced as “deŋ-gē, -ˌgā” . Etymology is American Spanish. But we usually pronounce it with a short “e” – den-g-eh. Dengue Hemorrhagic Fever (DHF), mostly found in the tropics, is spread to human with the bite of female aedes mosquitoes. The virus incubates the human body for 2 to 7 days before it leads to fever.
According to my father (which was later reinforced by some health magazine), these dangerous dengue carrier mosquitoes are only active until ten in the morning. Since then, I have not allowed my son to play or bike around the house, even in the garage before 10:00AM. We certainly make sure we do not have stagnant water around us, but still with a neighbor’s grandson across the block having just had his bout with Dengue, we could not be more careful. But a few days back, my son went out to see his grandma and they stayed outside, came back with mosquito bites around the legs.
These past couple of days was spent reading on this scary disease, its symptoms and cure. Symptoms include: fever, headache, severe joint pain and rash. But I also read that toddlers may have non typical symptoms, so that leaves us clueless for now. We are hoping and praying that what Jed has is just viral. The fever that he has been having since are all six to twelve hours apart and are low grade ones.
I have also been making Sweet Potato Tops (Camote Juice) this last couple of days. There have been a lot of articles that have testified on the potency of Camote juice to cure Dengue. So I thought, if it was Dengue that Jed has, then he will be cured in no time. Camote tops juice ups the immune system, which helps the body fight the rapid reduction of the blood platelets.
We are praying that Jed will fully recover soon, whatever this is, his pedia said to hope that it is just viral. He sure is getting better by the day. I am just blessed that it was never hard for me to have him take his juice medicine (whether lemongrass or sweet potato tops). Despite of his fever, he still remains the chatterbox, playful boy, ever cooperative with the juices and paracetamol medications that I give him. His appetite remains the same.
As I said in this Plurk page, I refuse to worry and am confident that God will heal my cutie pie real soon. Thank you so much for those who prayed with us, especially our church family in SBC-Makati.
