New Year

Just returned to work from 9-day New Year vacation. Allie and I took one extra day off, so it was ten days for us. We went 300 km south to Kaohsiung for family reunion, a must-do but not always pleasant tradition. My grandfather and grandmother, now in their eighties, are not the kind of people you want to spent your holiday with. Actually, there were two small argues and one big fight when we were there. It may be the last time I follow this tradition to ruin my holidays.

After Kaohsiung, we then went back north to Tamshui and stayed with Allie's family. Yoshi had a good time there because there was more space for him to run, and there were many toys to play while his cousin was away.

When we finally returned to Taipei, Yoshi fell asleep right after dinner time--very very early for him compared to his usual schedule. He became very shy to strangers in the vacation--maybe there were too many new people and new places to him. That summarized the vacation, if not with the surprise that came on Sunday.

One o'clock in Sunday morning, Yoshi got a fever which reached 39 degrees. I was not too worried because he seemed still as energetic as usual. My mom "strongly suggested" that we took him to a nearby clinic on Sunday morning, so we did. On the way home, he began to said that his belly aches. In the evening he had diarrhea. At sunrise time of Monday, the fever raised to 40 degrees and he shivered badly. So, we took him to ER. The resident on duty was an interesting one. He finishes his diagnosis very quickly but spent a lot of time teaching me the reason of fevers and signs should be alerted. I guess he had saw too many cases far worse then Yoshi so in this case there was no need to go to ER. He also knows that such thing will happen again and again as Yoshi grows up, so he tried to prepare me for that.

Yoshi's fever now lasts two to three hours at 40 degrees, and the peak repeats every five to six hours. This is only the second day in the progress, still several days to go before he recovers from this virus infection and develops new immunity for it.