… aaaand we have penicillin!

So Monday started up bright and early, well, at 7am. I held down the fort for a couple of hours (both kids measured at 37.4°C, yay! heading in the right direction) before a-still-very-sick-and-lethargic Finnur kindly crawled out into the living room to supervise dvd-viewing while I napped.

Fast-forward to lunchtime. I managed to persuade the sick-lings to put a handful of bites into their gobs, and then it was rest-time. Before everyone went down temps got taken again (we really want those kids to go to school soon!) and were 37.8 (Anna) and 38.0 (Bjarki). Erm, not good.

Bjarki collapsed into bed with Finnur, while Anna stubbornly refused to sleep. I ended up taking her on a grocery run, which these days means loading up on Gatorade. Yup, Gatorade is apparently the medically approved drink of choice for sick ones that refuse to eat, or eat very little, and is supposedly better to stave off dehydration than just plain old water.

Later that afternoon Bjarki started wailing while trying to wake up, and eventually I decided it was time to have him checked out again. It just didn’t look like he was getting any better like Anna appeared to be. Being late in the day, I opted to haul him to the neighborhood health clinic (Heilsugæslustöð) where they have an ‘after-hours’ program where you can show up between 4-6 pm and wait in line to see a doctor.

So we showed up around 5pm, got signed in, and sat down. It soon became apparent that Bjarki was supremely lethargic, and he basically lounged/slept on my lap for the next hour and a half as we waited. Yup, it was a long long wait (no reordering on a basis of ‘who is sickest’, and apparently Mondays are usually bad) but in the end we got in to see the doctor.

She took a good listen to his lungs, and said that they didn’t sound phlegm-y, only uneven/unequal, which could be a sign of pneumonia, or the beginning of one. That combined with his general demeanor suggested to her that penicillin was probably needed, and we emerged (quasi-victorious) with a prescription entered into the general database. (Yup, Iceland now has a central database for prescriptions, so patients can go to ANY pharmacy, and they can look them up. No papers needed, no official transfers between pharmacies.)

With that we headed to the pharmacy, which is conveniently located next to a large grocery store, and since it was late I went there to grab some grilled chicken (yup, from under the heat-lamps) and gave Finnur a call, who agreed to put some rice up, although it sounded like it could very well be the end of him!

So with that we went home, ate dinner, and got Bjarki to bed. When it was Anna’s turn to go to bed, I took her temperature, and curses, it was up to 38°C, meaning no school for her tomorrow either. Perhaps not surprisingly, I’ve already cancelled tomorrow-morning’s class… and now we wait and see what tomorrow brings….