Sleepless in Caraga

It happened 2 months ago until now it shocked me all the way. It stopped me from hemorrhagic days of blogging for Caraga. The trauma has never been gone easily. It always reminds me the fear and sadness when I look at my baby who suffers from dengue hemorrhagic fever. When you are a father, you have to exert so much effort for the sake of you baby to survive, but nevertheless your being a father it makes go to the weakest part of your life, and all you have to do is cry.

The Pain Has Started

My 6-month old baby girl has been in fever for 5 days, I thought it as a simple illness normal for an infant. But during the sixth days, her temperature drops, and she is weak and always sleeps. I always cradle her till she relax and sleep, but when she awake, she vomited that drops all over my shirt. She is so frail and uneasy that I decided to send her to a nearby hospital in the afternoon.

At night, I was able to look the blood results at the Nurses Station, I found out that her platelets drops from the regular 150-300 to 90, I was so shocked because it alarmed me so much of the result. My wife, I see her started to cry in the ward. When our doctor came informed us that our daughter is suffering of dengue hemorrhagic fever. This time her platelet drops from 90 to 60 in just for two hours.

When I heard this, I approached our doctor and talk to her like a little man, with shaky voice and ask her will our baby survive this time. The doctor answer us slowly with a straight words that she is okay as long as we have to cope-up the falling platelets count up to 40, then prepare for two blood donors.

After hearing the words two blood donors, I felt cold and nervous since in my entire life I don’t have any donor of blood replacing my own blood, and this gonna happen of my very own baby of six months.

We have to monitor her platelet count every two hours. The tense and sadness overtakes us whenever the results of platelet count delivered to us. Sometimes I felt hopeless and being a father is losing some part of me. I thought of myself being the lowest father of all times. It seems I am losing the battle against the enemy that horrified my family.

Time flying so fast, we have to hurry-up catching for the remedy but the viruses ate her platelets so fast. She is weak and tired, and her eyes are bulging. The pain and suffering that we felt as parents so much there to hold as we look into the eyes of our baby. But I see in my baby’s eye that she is fighting for the major battle of her life. The next day her platelet drops to the lowest 35, and so I and my wife prepare for the worst. We have to get in the two blood donors to sustain the life of my baby.

Blood donors were sometimes difficult to find in a rush situation especially at the middle of the night. Even the same type of blood, you have to find the right person for cross-matching, and interview him for any background activities.

Light At The End Of The Tunnel

In the morning, new platelets were added in my baby’s bloodstream, and so, it is just a matter of relief for a couple like us. But her platelets continue to drops every five hours of monitoring. It seems the dropping is still there, and we always uneasy of the result until it reach the platelet count to 67. But our doctor assure us that our baby is now in the safe period since she now reach 3 days of the critical period. Our doctor assurance renewed our strength and our hope for our baby to be with us forever.

You can really feel how important this little angel in your life. For six months she was with us, and it is so difficult for us when she is back where she came from. We almost lost her. This time we are hoping for the best of her, and back her new form of life to us.

I really found out that the best place to make your heart happy, not in the beautiful place that your eyes can see, not even in paradise Caraga, but the real tourist destination is a place that we call it home.

But most of all we thanks God for His help and guidance during those times of trials and sufferings that happened in my family.

The Culprit

According to the study, I found out that dengue hemorrhagic fever is caused by a dengue virus which is carried by Aedes aegypti mosquito that feeds during the day. To control the spread of dengue hemorrhagic fever, no stagnant clear water inside and outside your house that has an opening. Even a clear glass of water that is stayed for one week is dangerous because Aedes mosquitos lives and reproduce in clean water. In our house there were some bromeliads, a plant that forms receptacle when rain water comes. We should be careful anything that holds clean water, even those in our surroundings that we can see clean water exist. Well, these are just simple precautionary measures.