When the Baby is Sick on Vacation

This past week when we went on vacation, Beanie’s little cough turned pretty grim and we ended up in the urgent care center.   He had been coughing for a week, but never ran a fever and so we were letting that run its course.   But the travel seemed to rev up that cough into a full blown cold and when it settled into his chest, it took a turn.

When he is sick at home, Chris and I treat it with a humidifier with menthol oil in his bedroom, saline spray, a nose sucker, and Tylenol if there’s a fever.   We also give him Benedryl if he is having trouble sleeping at night.   I brought all of those supplies with us (except the humidifier, which we ended up buying at Target while we were in Florida), but Beanie started pulling on one of his ears and the ear was visibly red on the outside, so we decided to take him somewhere and have him looked at to make sure he didn’t have an ear infection, too.

I thought that would be an easy process.   We called Chris’ old pediatrician (who was in the same practice as my old pediatrician, oddly enough), but they said that they were short staffed because it was the week of Christmas and that they couldn’t see a new patient.   They suggested that we take him up to either the children’s hospital in town or to the emergency room.   We couldn’t do the emergency room because our insurance wouldn’t cover it if it wasn’t a true life or death emergency and even though I would have gladly argued that you cannot be sick when Santa comes, I doubt Aetna would have agreed.   So, we headed up to the children’s hospital where we were told they saw urgent care patients.   But when we got there, we were told that they no longer saw first-time patients and no matter how much we begged and pleaded and explained that we were on vacation, they wouldn’t budge.   They sent us instead to an urgent care clinic on the other side of town.

Where we sat in a waiting room full of flu patients for a two hours.

And then where we sat in the impossibly tiny examination room for another two hours.

And then where we saw a doctor who was not a pediatrician and was apparently scared of babies because she refused to touch Bean.

And then where we waited for another hour for the weird doctor to bring us the two prescriptions.

Yeah, it was a long day.

But while we were in the impossibly tiny examination room, Bean busied himself with the only thing that he wanted to play with- the paper on the table.

At first, I tried to occupy him with toys I had brought with us or books or by looking out the window or taking a stroll through the halls, but the fourth hour being there, I thought, “To hell with this…” and I let Beanie go to town.   When we left, I looked back to the table and smiled, knowing that at least Bean had left his tiny little protest on the wait time in the form of shredded paper.

In the end, the weird doctor gave Bean a prescription for an infant decongestant and amoxacillan for his ear.   I called my own doctor back home to double check that these were okay for him to take since the doctor who prescribed them wasn’t a pediatrician.   With the okay from our doctor, we doped Beaner up.   Within 24 hours, he was a new Bean.   He wasn’t coughing, his ear felt better, and he was sleeping better.   All in all, we were out of commission for one day, but it was totally worth it because those few hours of waiting totally saved our Christmas.

I think the trick to traveling with a sick baby is to be flexible and stay calm.   I was really frustrated at first that we were having to take a whole day out of our vacation to deal with doctor’s offices, but what else are you going to do?   When it comes down to it, everything else can be worked around a sick baby.   Because we took the time to rest, let Beanie get some medicine, and get ourselves back to a good place, our entire holiday was better.   So, if the baby gets sick, just take a deep breath and put everything else on pause for a while.   It’s worth it in the long run.