It's a pain

It's quite clear that people have different pain thresholds. I'm a complete girlie wuss, my birth plan* was succint and to the point and went something along the lines of "leave the drugs trolley with me". Simon (being male) claims to have a much higher tolerance to pain (of course) and was saying just at the weekend that Jas (who is, it has to be said, only 10) isn't very good with pain***.

At the moment Jas is the snot queen, and this particular beasty of a cold took an evil turn yesterday giving Jas earache. Wicked English mother that I am sent Jas in to school complete with swimming kit (I had suggested that she didn't need to do swimming, but she wanted to, and in my defence she hadn't told me she had earache) I then got a call from Herr B part way through the morning asking me to come and collect Jas because she had earache****.

I collected Jas as requested and immediately rang the children's doctor for an appointment, not wanting the possible ear infection to get too good a grip. This was 11am. The earliest appointment they could give me was 11.45am - I love the German health care system, the Germans whine about it, but if I were in England I'd have been lucky to get an appointment for the following day. What's more, we turned up at the doc's to an empty waiting room and were shown straight in. Prescription followed examination and then home via the chemist - which took two trips as the 1st was out of the antibiotics, although Jas didn't complain because they still gave her a packet of Gummibears despite not being able to serve us!

The doc has given Jas amoxicillin (lemon flavoured) a nasal spray for the snot and ibuprofen tablets that melt on the tongue (for the pain). Jas is not and never has been any good with medicine, fortunately (touch wood) she has always been a very healthy child, when she gets ill she does it in style - a broken arm that needed two operations, a stomach bug that required an intravenous fluid drip and the only other time she's had an ear infection she vomited every time she stood up. When she was tiny and had a cough it was impossibleto get her to take cough medicine because she would vomit it up. And now she has three lots of meds, three times a day...the nose spray she's fine with, not overly impressed, but fine. The antibiotics have to be decanted into an espresso cup and set alongside a glass of water and a glass of something "nice". She take a sip of each, complaining all the time, but at least it's going down, even if it does take 5 minutes for the swallowing of 5ml. The ibuprofen tablets are a different matter. She took one yesterday, the idea is that it melts on the tongue and then you can swallow it, Jas very nearly gagged on the first one and since then has denied having any pain whatsoever. I'm not sure which is greater her new tolerance to pain or her stubborn determination. The hard part is going to be making her take the antiobiotics to the end of the course when she's no longer got any symptoms.



* I don't know if it's still THE thing to do prior to giving birth, but back in the day (damals**) it was what you did to prepare for the upcoming 18+ years of parenting.
** in joke (just between me 'n Muna) sorry.
*** the filing of feet and the application of anti verruca medicine were involved and reduced poor J to a blubbering heap (I hid in the cellar).
**** Herr B then went on to add that if I wanted to keep Jas at home today so that she'd be fit for the evening, when the class are doing their performance of "the Emperor's New Clothes", then that would be fine...well yeah, maybe, but surely maths and grammar are a bit more important?