Fevers

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What to do when your Child has a fever when on
vacation? - or any scenario where you cant get
to a Doctor
Doctors everywhere are hounded by midnight calls
by worried parents that their child has a fever
thats going up and down, not getting better and
so on and so forth. Such is the love of parents
that even that 1 F makes them queasy and turn
restless in seconds. Picture this, you are on the
first vacation in years and your 2 year old child
starts to heat up. You know you deserve this long
vacation break but what do you do? More likely
than not, most parents rush to find a Doctor or a
clinic regardless of the hour or not knowing the
severity of the fever. Well to give all parents
an answer, NOT all fevers even need medical
attention! Wanna know more? Read on. Fever -
what is it and how it happens. Before we get to
the real meaty stuff, we need to understand how a
fever works. The simplest way to understand this
is to think of our body like a house and the
fever control mechanism as a thermostat. When we
get an infection(viral or bacterial or fungal or
anything), our body sends out a response to the
brains thermostat and says, Hey, raise up the
thermostat. We wanna cook up things in here.
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Why you say will the body do this? Well, the
answer is simple. Heat helps to kill the invading
agent. Every living organism has a lot of
proteins and enzymes made of proteins and if you
remember those boring high school lectures well,
you would recollect that all proteins have an
optimum temperature and going beyond makes them
function not so great. Thus, the bacteria and the
virus or any microbe begins to die. This is how
and why the fever happens. If you want more info
on this, you can ask your medical questions on
askthedoctor.com When your childs fever is
actually serious This section will not be as
verbose as the previous one. This section just
talks about what the fever threshold should be
based on age. Suppose your child is less than 6
months old, set the threshold at 100.4 F. Meaning
that the second the childs fever gets to 100.4
F, you need to see a Doctor. The big reason for
this is that a newborns immunity is
non-existent. And it relies on antibodies in the
mothers milk to get its supply. So, the newborn
needs as much care as possible. For children
older than 6 months, you can set the threshold at
103 F. The older child can produce antibodies and
also, weaning will start at 6 months so the baby
may get fever due to toxins or microbes in food.
This is normal in some cases and you should allow
the childs body to develop immunity rather than
suppressing it with antibiotics at every sight of
a Fahrenheit rise.
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There are some exceptions to this rule. If your
child get febrile seizures, you should work on
reducing the temperature as soon as possible(The
next section explains how to reduce body
temperature). If the child has cough, cold and
other symptoms, it may be best to see a Doctor or
get medical help online. Combat fever
101 Fevers are the simplest and the easiest
symptoms to fight off. They are simply defined as
a raised body temperature and you can check the
temperature easily and repeatedly by simply using
a thermometer. Once you know that your child has
a fever, the first thing you should do is to stay
near your child. The physical presence is
reassuring to the child and helps with the
psychological aspect of fever control. Next, get
some lukewarm water and begin sponging the child.
DO NOT use cold water as this will make matters
worse. Sponging regularly and diligently should
bring down the temperature quickly.
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• If sponging is not working, then give your child
  a 1ml per kg of Calpol syrup in 2 to 3 divided
  doses in a day. If your child is 10 kg, then you
  can give him 2 doses of 5 ml each in one day. If
  this does not bring then fever down, then you can
  consult a Doctor online on askthedoctor.com
• Summarizing, I advise all parents to create a
  fever kit. This kit is a simple kit that can help
  you control the childs fever as needed. The kit
  would ideally contain
• Thermometer. Oral and Rectal
• Ear based thermometer
• Sponge
• Calpol Syrup (change this often to ensure the
  syrup has not expired)
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