Medical history

1.45 am Boxing Day morning I call NHS Direct, child 4 is struggling to breathe. After answering the chap at the end of the lines questions, he asks me to hold the phone over child 4's face so that he can hear him. Then he tells me that he has called an ambulance and I need to put on all the lights at the front of the house so that they can see us easily. The paramedics arrive and check him over,  his blood sugars are ok, his temperature is fine (probably because of the calpol we gave him 2 hours ago) but his oxygen stats aren't good, so off they go with Mr L to the hospital - oxygen masks and blue flashing lights I am told later, they waited until they got to the bottom of the road so that I didn't panic as I was left home at 3am with child 1,2 & 3 to wait. 

Our problem as with many other adopted children is lack of medical information. Many adopters will have the red books that are given to children when they are born but that just gives known information, weight at birth, which immunisations they have had etc, it doesn't say that they've had chicken pox or that they are susceptible to chest infections. With the older three, I know their past, I've lived it with them. I know child 1 suffers with her throat, child 2 when little had a nasty chest infection and for years would always have croup when he caught a cold. Child 3 is rarely poorly, so if she has a temperature it means something nasty is on its way, her Achilles heel is stomach cramps caused be stress. But with child 4 I just don't know what to expect, despite him being with us for over a year we still haven't experienced enough to be sure of what effects him and so in the last 6 weeks we have had an ambulance take him to hospital twice. Firstly, he fitted, just febrile Convulsions but having never experienced them I have to say that they terrified me and now a severe chest infection that affected his breathing. Both times he has bounced back although this time it's a slow process and the giving of medication takes 3 of us. Yes I have tried all matters of bribery!!!! Of course even if we had had him from birth these events would have potentially still occurred but I think that we would have picked up early on the need to calpol to reduce or prevent the temperature quicker if we knew that when he was ill his temperature would spike, thus hopefully preventing the fits in the first place.

What we have learned over the last few weeks is to carry the calpol sachets around with us, in case of a high temperature and now we will watch his breathing like a hawk just in case he has a pre disposition to asthma. Never a dull moment here.