Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
So Mrs. Joiner, I understand that Emily's had three days of cough, ond day of
congestion and also one day of low-grade fever. Is that correct?
And she's also not eating and drinking so well but not having any diarrhea right?
That's right.
So, you know, from what you're telling me, it really sounds like this is a virus.
This is happening so much right now. There's so many kids coming back into
the office right now
with upper respiratory tract infections
and almost all these these are caused by a virus
so what we do for those is we actually don't give her any medicines, but we will
treat her symptoms
How does that sound? Do you have any questions about that?
Well i was thinking maybe we could get her some antibiotics or something? I know when
she had the ear infection a couple months ago we gave her some Amoxicillin
and that really seemed to help clear it up and made her feel better quickly, so I was thinking
maybe we could get some antibiotics for her
so i understand your concerns and i definitely want to get Emily better as
quickly as possible
The issue with giving her antibiotics is that antibiotics can cause
side effects
and so when we gave her the antibiotics for the ear infection a couple of months
ago, that was because she had the ear infection exactly as you put it
and ear infections are caused by bacteria
whereas now, Emily's having an upper respiratory tract infection
which is again almost always caused by a virus and so i wouldn't want to give her
any antibiotics to treat a virus because antibiotics actually don't do
anything to treat viruses and again they really can cause some serious side effects.
Well she didn't have any side effects last time, I mean she
felt fine and got better more quickly
you're right she did and the good thing about that is that's because we were
giving her antibiotics appropriately
We were giving her antibiotics to treat the bacteria that was caused by the ear infection
the many bacteria that was causing the ear infection
But this time, I wouldn't want to give her antibiotics if I think she's having a
virus because if you
inappropriately use antibiotics
what can happen is later when she actually needs them, they won't have the same
effectiveness they actually might not make her feel better
okay well it's is there anything i can do? Can I get her some cold medicine
or something over the counter to make her feel a little better?
So again, I definitely want to get her better and I'm sure this is probably very ***
you right now as a new mom right? Yeah, it's a little scary. She's so upset and I just want to
help her. Absolutely.
So there's definitely some things that you can give her. Unfortunately, cold medicines have
not been proven
through all the studies that have been done, there's been no benefit shown with
cold or cough medicines for kids under the age of four
so Emily falls in that age range of being under the age of four years old, so I
don't want to give her any cough or cold medicines.
The reasons for that are a couple. So one is that, again, they don't show any
benefit. But two,
you know how if you would give her tylenol or acetaminophen because she has
a fever. Some of the cough and cold medicines also have acetaminophen in them
and so they have a combination of a lot of other medications in them
and so you know actually could give an accidental overdose of medicines
and so that's why we get very concerned about them for kids. I see. Well is there anything I
can do? I mean can I get her vaporizer, some chest rub or something to
help her
Yeah, again, I hear you, I definitely want to get you guys
all back together in that house and so
there are some things that you can do. So there's a nasal saline spray. You can buy it
over the counter
and the way that works is you give her a couple of drops in her nose and then you
suction it out with the nasal aspirator, and that should help break up some of
that nasal congestion and some of that mucus in her nose. Some other
things is, how's her cough? Is her cough really bothering her? Yeah, it's been
keeping her up and keeping us up and that's I'd like to help her out with that too
if possible
okay I want to help you guys out too because I wan to get everybody sleeping in that house
So what you can actually give her for the cough is some honey
So i know we talked before when she was under a year, and she wasn't allowed to have
honey but now that she's eighteen months old she's allowed to have a little bit
of honey so you can do a half to one teaspoon of honey
a couple of times a day, three to four times a day and that actually might help
break up the dryness in her cough, and actually help break up the mucus that's
in her chest with that cough okay?
well I guess
I'll try and get that
nasal spray
and try the honey and hope she feels a little better
I think those things will help, and another thing that might help is
there's a website from the american academy of pediatrics
it's called healthychildren.org and that's a great website. There's a lot of facts
for parents, it has a lot of stuff in there about how to treat kids
when they have these upper respiratory tract infections, and I think
that really would be helpful
well i'll definitely check that out as well, thanks.
okay great so i want to make sure that at Emily's doing okay, though
so how about this, give me a call in a couple of days and just let me know how
she's doing. If she's not doing any better, then we'll have her come into the
office and get her seen.
Okay, that sounds good.
Great! It's great talking to you, keep me posted. Will do you, thank you.