"Baby illnesses"

My 10 month old son was really ill. He had recently started nursery and gotten a fever and cough. We had a negative PCR test and he seemed to get better. 7 days later he had another fever that wasn’t responding to medication and was getting higher. We attended the Royal Hospital for Children and Young People in Edinburgh (Sick Kids). They didn’t know why he wasn’t responding so we were admitted. 

Turns out he has 3 different respiratory viruses (none of them were covid) and his wee body wasn’t coping. He started responding in the afternoon and they let us go home that night. 

The staff were brilliant, they were great with my son and brought him toys and tried to make him feel as comfortable as possible. They found out what was wrong and we’re just waiting on the results of urine and faeces tests to rule out anything else too.  Poor wee guy simply had no immunity (he’s never even had a sniffle before due to being home through the pandemic and not mixing with others) and got everything all at once.

I wanted to share my story firstly to accentuate the wider effects of the pandemic, but also to thank the student nurse on shift, Johanna. Johanna was simply amazing. Nothing was too much trouble for her, she was so person-centred on both my son and myself and she really really helped me when I was having a bit of a panic/meltdown. She is such a caring person and she really made all the difference for us. Everyone else we encountered were fine, but Johanna really stood out and we are truly grateful for her support.