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Scary

28th May 2009 by Helena 11 Comments  

The American writer Kin Hubbard once said: “No one can feel as helpless as the owner of a sick goldfish.” I disagree. I can’t imagine anyone feeling more helpless than I did last night when Olivia woke up with a temperature of 39.7. I lay there feeling the heat come from her little body and quickly decided to take her to hospital. I may be helpless, but others are not.
She has been ill all week, as have I, but she has had a temperature which I have been spared from. It is an incredible thing, a temperature, because when it is there it is so scary and you think it will never go. But then when it goes you forget how awful it was. A bit like childbirth.
At the doctor’s yesterday (before the nocturnal visit) we had a meningitis scare. That was more than scary. For some reason their blood pressure machine went off the scale and when Olivia refused to move her neck they feared the worst. The main man was called in, a Dr Styles, and he quickly put my mind at rest. But for a moment I was staring into the abyss.

This morning at 3 am (and can I just add what a pleasant place Abu Dhabi is at that time of the morning) they said they needed to bring her temperature down. Olivia refused to take any medicine so they asked me rather gingerly if she would mind a suppository.

“Of course not,” I told them. “We come from France.”

amd_enchanted.jpg

They monitored her for an hour and a half and her temperature came down to 37.6. Phew. She slept well and is now in bed watching ‘Enchanted’ with Dr McDreamy. He may be even more effective than the suppository. I am going to snooze next to her and hope the scary moments are over…..
Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2009


Filed Under: Children, blog --> Tagged With: scary

11 thoughts on Scary

  • Norrie & Mary H. says:
    28th May 2009 at 9:16 am

    That really is scary. I’m so glad that Olivia is tucked up with Doctor Dreamy, she must be feeling better,
    Tell her that it least her goldfish isn’t sick, just swimming around with Sausage John and about 2000 tadpoles.
    N & M

  • Cate Dubai says:
    28th May 2009 at 10:15 am

    Helena, you are so right, Abu Dhabi and even Dubai are pleasant places in the middle of the night. I assume you’re referring to the fact that these are nocturnal towns where the number of people and vehicles plying the streets only adds to our already strong sense of personal security? Like you, we lived for many years in France (in our case Paris) before moving to the Gulf. And although I regret that your recent experience of local hospitals was prompted by your daughter’s illness (scary beyond words, thank goodness she’s recovered), surely the health care in our cities, albeit primarily private, deserves a positive mention too?
    ps: love your pieces and rely on you please to continue highlighting the less sensational side of life in the Emirates.

  • helena says:
    28th May 2009 at 10:23 am

    Hello Cate, yes they do, I was really impressed with Al Noor and as I said to Olivia last night, if we were in England we would have waited for four hours surrounded by people throwing up and/or bleeding from knife wounds and then maybe not even have got to a doctor. I have never seen an A&E unit so calm and clean. I was referring more to the lack of vehicles trying to drive into me (which happens every day on the school run but also happens in every other major city) and also to the almost cool air which was heavenly.
    Hx

  • Jacques says:
    28th May 2009 at 10:52 pm

    I knew Sarkozy’s visit in Abu Dhabi would cause trouble. It can’t be a coincidence. Poor Olivia! Give her a kiss from me

  • Cate Dubai says:
    29th May 2009 at 5:11 am

    Yes, my experience of late night dashes to A&E units in Dubai has always been very positive too. And even when we were forced to go to a public hospital (as the police insisted we did after an accident) although suffering from only very minor injuries, we were seen by a doctor within five or ten minutes.
    Something else that’s so different here about travelling around at night/early hours of the morning is that even as a woman alone I never feel insecure. And if my car broke down or I had to get out of the vehicle for some other reason, irrespective of where I was, I wouldn’t have the least concern waving down passerbys or having strangers come to my rescue. Now in London, on the otherhand, I think I would be reluctant to even walk across a police station carpark on my own in the early hours!

  • helena says:
    29th May 2009 at 4:35 pm

    And can you believe I was back at the A&E with Bea yesterday afternoon? She decided to hurl herself down onto a mattress and hit her head on a shelf on the way down – blood everywhere. So I rushed her up there. When it happened I was in the middle of sending an email to the Daily Mail but we were seen so quickly and had NO waiting between any of the treatments (very minor injury thank goodness) in fact it all went to quickly I didn’t even have time to finish the email until we left. I could have written a book in a London A&E.

  • mimi says:
    29th May 2009 at 9:36 pm

    And a trilogy in a Dublin A and E!

  • jose says:
    29th May 2009 at 10:53 pm

    My God, what’s happening out there with all these dramatic
    dashes to A&E ? Sounds omnious – are you all London expats?

  • Josephine says:
    1st June 2009 at 9:43 am

    Pleased to hear Olivia is well again. What a super-scary moment. My friend works with terminally ill children which is something I could never comprehend being able to do. Thankfully not everybody feels the same. My daughter also had a high temperature with the flu the other night and a billion fears raced through me in minutes.

  • stef says:
    2nd June 2009 at 8:17 am

    How does she feel now? Good luck!

  • helena says:
    2nd June 2009 at 8:22 am

    Hi she feels much better thanks, but can you believe yesterday Bea fell on top of a classmates ringbinder which was left open and gorged her knee on it. Poor little love. The school nurse patched her up and said it was not a place they can stitch but she has to keep her leg straight for two days.
    Hx

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Helena Frith Powell was born in Sweden to a Swedish mother and Italian father, but grew up mainly in England. She is the author of eleven books, translated into several languages including Chinese and Russian. She wrote the French Mistress column The Sunday Times about life in France for several years. She is a regular contributor to the Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday, The Times, Daily Telegraph, Tatler Magazine and Harper’s Bazaar.

Helena has been the editor of four magazines, including M Magazine, a supplement for the Abu Dhabi based National Newspaper and FIVE, a high-end fashion glossy, also published in Abu Dhabi. Helena was also editor in chief of 360 Life, a quarterly glossy magazine published with the Sports 360 Newspaper in Dubai, part of the Chalhoub Group.

Helena contributes regularly to UK-based newspapers and magazines and holds a Masters in Creative Writing from the University of Cambridge. Helena is also working on a thriller called Thin Ice that will be published in spring 2021 as well as a novel about the relationship between Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield called Sense of an Echo.

Her latest non-fiction work Smart Women Don’t Get Wrinkles came out in hardback in 2016 and in paperback in April 2018.

Helena, who was educated at Durham University, lives in the Languedoc region of France with her husband Rupert and their three children.

Bibliography

More France Please, we’re British; Gibson Square 2004

Two Lipsticks and a Lover 2005; Gibson Square (hardback)

All You Need to be Impossibly French; (US version of above) Penguin 2006

Two Lipsticks and a Lover; Arrow Books (paperback) 2007

Ciao Bella Gibson Square; (hardback) 2006

Ciao Bella Gibson Square; (paperback) 2007

So Chic! (French version of Two Lipsticks) Leduc Editions 2008 (also translated into Chinese, Russian and Thai)

More, More France; Gibson Square 2009

To Hell in High Heels; Arrow Books 2009 (also translated into Polish)

The Viva Mayr Diet; Harper Collins 2009

Love in a Warm Climate; Gibson Square 2011

The Ex-Factor; Gibson Square 2013

Smart Women Don’t Get Wrinkles; Gibson Square 2016

The Arnolfini Marriage; Amazon Kindle December 2016

Smart Women Don’t Get Wrinkles (paperback); Gibson Square spring 2018

The Longest Night; Gibson Square spring 2019

 

 

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