to wish advice on dealing with childhood illness etc was a bit less mixed?

[working9while5]

Last night, we called out of hours doc as ds1 (3) had woken up from a nap with a temp of 39 degrees and had a cough and seemed a bit wheezy. The previous night in the middle of the night he had woken up coughing and thrown up a few times. He will usually vomit when he has been coughing - we took him to A and E when he was a baby as there was so much of it and everyone has assured us it was fine.

Anyway, despite me trying to communicate again and again that ds1 had been in good form and playing both yesterday and the day before, just perhaps a little pink cheeked, and that he was talking and not struggling to breathe etc, they sent out an ambulance.

The paramedic was REALLY harsh with us for not calling out an ambulance the previous night, though ds1 had no temperature then and again, was not struggling to breathe. At the point he started going on about the importance of not delaying, he had done an ECG and a heelprick test on ds1 and said nothing about why or what he had found and so in the ambulance I was freaking, thinking oh my God, what is it? I thought it was just a cold and a cough and was only going to the docs to make sure it hadn't gone to his chest!

Anyway, four hours later... we saw a doc who said... "oh he's fine it's just viral, nothing to worry about" and sent us home with no meds or anything so I presume it WAS fine.

I feel this year that I am constantly getting mixed messages from the health service about how to deal with my kids' health. Ds2 had difficulties with breastfeeding and I swear I got SO many different contradictory pieces of advice, the same with several trips to the GP about ds2's ears.. I just feel that it is impossible sometimes to know what to do and yet several times this year I've been tutted at for not doing something or doing something differently to what that health professional advised when another one had told me the exact opposite!

I feel really confused and irritated by it. Why are we expected to know what to do when the advice keeps on changing??

For a cough and a bit of a wheeze, with a raised temperature, I'd give calpol/child nurofen and see if it helps.

If there was still a wheeze the next day, I'd make an appointment with the doctor. Unless your child was actually having difficulty breathing, there was no need for an ambulance.

With mine I'd usually just give painkillers, do cool water sponging and get the temperature down. Your kids are going to have a lot of coughs/colds and other childhood illnesses. Make sure you always have Calpol in because most of these illnesses can be most effectively treated at home.

When things are done over the phone it often depends on how things are said, and even down to how panicy the parents sound which makes it hard and they will always take a "better safe than sorry" attitude.

But at the end of the day medical proffessionals are only human and so sometimes judgements will be off.

I wasn't even vaguely panicky though and I rang fully expecting to be treating him at home. If the cough hadn't worsened so quickly at night and his temp hadn't been so high/had come down with Calpol I would have waited until Monday but as an asthmatic myself, the fact it had come on quickly at night time made me want to have his chest checked before letting him sleep for the night as this is usually when breathing issues worsen in general.

The guy kept saying: "of the three issues, the temperature, the cough and the wheeze, which one do you find most concerning?" and I said, "well, none of those in particul" at which point he told me to choose because it was the only way he could "move to the next screen" . Of course breathing is always going to be a bigger concern than a cough per se, as coughs are pretty much rife all the time, so I said that.. so then out came the ambulance.

To be honest, the guy on the phone was one thing.. and I fully understand THAT decision to send out an ambulance.. but the guy in my living room who had done all the checks, listened to ds's chest, done an ECG and a heel prick test standing there not telling me what any of that had shown lecturing me for not having called for an ambulance sooner (when I was still pretty much of the opinion that ds just had a heavy cold or borderline chest infection, but not being medically trained wanted to rule the chest infection out) was quite frightening in his approach and with no real reason as it turned out. I had to strip ds1 down (temp 39.3) and put him in a sheet to put him in the ambulance. I hadn't considered that a temp of 39.3 in a 3 year old was really that big a concern given that all over the A and E walls there are signs saying not to give calpol as fevers in childhood are normal as long as a child is responding and there are no signs of serious illness.

Anyway, my point is really about the inconsistency of the messages, not the particular treatment.