Rescuing My Son from Food Poisoning Combined with Heatstroke
The afternoon before yesterday, after my child came home from school, he kept complaining of dizziness. School lets out at 3:40, and it is the height of the sweltering season; by the time he was walking home, the sun was blazing overhead, exactly when heatstroke is most likely. As soon as he got home he collapsed onto the bed and slept; he was so dizzy and nauseated that he did not even want to speak, and a temperature gun showed he had a fever.
When I came home in the evening, I instinctively judged that he must have heatstroke and treated it accordingly. I used drugs such as Shidi Shui (Ten-Drop Liquid), and the fever could come down, but after a minute or two it would rise again; moreover, each time it returned after being reduced, the situation was more severe than before, and sweat was hard to come by.
This year the climate is abnormal; temperatures in many places have hit the highest records in a hundred years, and in recent days many cases of extremely high-mortality "heat stroke" (thermoplegia) have been reported in multiple areas. The mother of one of my high-school teachers also died of heatstroke not long ago. Seeing my child's condition worsening, I worried it might be a precursor of heat stroke and grew quite nervous. Using acrid-cool exterior-releasing medicines such as Yinqiao San (Honeysuckle Forsythia Powder) could also bring the fever down for a while; after a little sweat came out, no more sweat would appear, and within a few minutes of normal temperature the fever would return.
By nightfall the fever had risen to over 38°C, and around ten o'clock to over 39°C; various drugs and methods to reduce the fever were all ineffective. When my child was not feverish after medication, I asked in detail what had happened to him that day. I learned that at noon he had eaten a bowl of hot-and-sour rice noodles in the school cafeteria, and that in the afternoon he had diarrhea several times at school, each time passing watery stools, and had also gone several times after coming home. Only then did I realize that food poisoning and heatstroke had overlapped in my child, which was why the onset was so abrupt and the condition so severe.
At 10:30 p.m. his temperature was as high as 40°C; I no longer dared delay and immediately decided to call an ambulance to take him to the hospital emergency department. Before the ambulance arrived, the child developed difficulty breathing, paralysis of the limbs, and even his fingers could no longer move; he gradually alternated between lucidity and confusion. I quickly induced gagging and vomiting by stimulating his throat, and brought up everything that could be brought up. After briefly getting ready, packing some common medicines and water, I took my child out of the house. When we emerged, the ambulance had already arrived—less than five minutes after my call; the response speed was quite fast.
The ambulance took us to the fever clinic of a nearby Grade-A tertiary hospital. During the pandemic, fever patients could only be sent to fever clinics for first screening for COVID-19. We had to take a nucleic acid test and a CT scan; only after the results came out could we register with an emergency-department doctor for treatment.
After getting into the ambulance, the child's consciousness began to recover somewhat. I stroked his hand and said to him: "Son, don't panic, Dad is here, everything will be fine." The child also comforted me: "Dad, don't worry, my luck has always been good, nothing will happen." Although we both knew the situation was somewhat critical, we still comforted each other; I was glad to see the child being so sensible.
The gagging-induced vomiting at home had been very successful, emptying almost all the medicine, water and food from his stomach. So once on the ambulance, his symptoms began to ease markedly. Breathing gradually became much easier, the numbness gradually lessened, and consciousness was returning. In fact, inducing vomiting mattered a great deal, because over the next three hours he still could not see an emergency doctor; had I not induced vomiting right before boarding, his condition would have been quite dire.
In the hospital fever clinic, doctors and nurses followed epidemic-prevention rules, first taking a nucleic acid sample and drawing blood. A young female doctor came over and asked a few brief questions, had the nurse give us two ice packs for physical cooling, and left after doing this. When we asked when other medical treatment could begin, they told us to wait for the nucleic acid result. We asked how long the nucleic acid result would take; the doctor went to ask her colleague, who said it would take three hours.
The child lay on the bed in the fever clinic; the fever would come down only to rise again shortly after. His heart rate was very fast, over a hundred. But the blood oxygen saturation was okay and blood pressure was normal, which reassured me a great deal. I talked to my son, telling him that his basic vital signs were all very stable and there was no danger; and that in case of an emergency, there were emergency resuscitation devices here, safer than at home. I used a bit of conversation technique, understating his heart rate and telling him it was also normal. After hearing this, the child stopped being nervous; once the tension was gone, his heart rate quickly came down.
We had no other choice but to wait in the fever clinic. We bought some oral rehydration salts from the nurse, dissolved them in the water bottle we had brought, and gave them to the child to drink; after vomiting and diarrhea, electrolytes were surely disturbed, and rehydration salts were needed. The nurses and doctors in the fever clinic tried not to stay with patients; after receiving us and giving brief instructions they left, presumably to avoid cross-infection. So most of the time, only my child's mother and I were by his side. Except for one time when the child's fever rose to forty again and I went to call the doctor, who had the nurse add two more ice packs for us, and one time the doctor came over on her own initiative in between, no one attended to us at other times.
This firsthand experience made me understand why this year, in city after city, emergency patients have died due to delayed treatment. Under the current epidemic-prevention policies, the hospital workflow can no longer return to normal as it was before the pandemic. At the gates of hell, one can only rely on one's own immunity and on the first-aid knowledge one has mastered to save oneself. Had my son not vomited up the gastric contents through induced gagging, this time would probably have been grim.
Inducing vomiting worked; in fact, after the vomiting, the child gradually settled down. In the fever clinic he no longer needed to run to the toilet every so often as he had at school and at home. We waited a full three hours in the fever clinic, and he did not have another bowel movement.
All the measures the fever clinic gave us added up to three things: first, they gave us four ice packs in succession for physical cooling; second, they sold us a bag of rehydration salts, which in fact were barely used; third, at my request they set up an oxygen cylinder so my son could inhale some oxygen. The young doctors and nurses exchanged very few words with us; in the spacious observation room there were only the three of us. The tests done were blood draw, nucleic acid sampling, and a lung CT.
By the time the nucleic acid result and the lung CT results came out, the child's condition had already stabilized; because the stomach had been emptied, the later symptoms were actually no longer severe. The most severe situation had occurred at home, right before boarding the ambulance.
Carrying the nucleic-acid-negative and CT-negative results, we registered with the emergency department; three hours later we were finally formally seen. The doctor looked at the test results on the computer and said only that the white blood cells were very high, that it might be food poisoning, and suggested we get an IV infusion. After an hour of infusion in the emergency department, the doctor prescribed a box of Zhengchangsheng (Bacillus licheniformis capsules) for us to take home, and the treatment was considered complete.
Because of the pandemic, family members were not allowed to accompany patients during the infusion; during the hour-plus of my child's infusion, I sent his mother home to rest first, then rode my electric bicycle back to the hospital myself, standing at the emergency-room door feeding mosquitoes while waiting for my child.
Right at the emergency-room entrance, two drunkards were making trouble; one was unconscious and had been brought to the ER by his companion. The ER doctor checked his vital signs, found everything normal, and told his companion he could take him away. His companion loudly refused; the doctor said, then why don't you register and pay the fee and we'll give him sobering treatment. His companion loudly demanded to know why he should register and pay, worked himself into an emotional state, and cursed. Faced with this, the several doctors and security guards standing at the ER entrance kept dead silence, for fear of provoking the drunkard and triggering some disaster.
At that moment I deeply sympathized with these colleagues on night duty in the ER; such troublemaking patients appear in hospitals every day. Have I not myself often encountered patients or family members who loudly demand to know whether my conscience has been eaten by a dog, and why I charge for consulting about their illness? Each time it happens, I can only stay silent; any other action would be a mistake. This is the grievance and risk that medical work must bear. I often discipline myself with the restraint of a religious person; other colleagues, it seems, also have their ways of making themselves shut up.
At three in the morning, the child's infusion finally finished; he walked out of the ER entrance on his own, saw me waiting at the door, walked over, and sat on the back seat of my electric bicycle, and we went home together. The infusion and Zhengchangsheng had not solved his diarrhea problem; after getting home he still had watery diarrhea every two hours. But because of the pandemic, the hospital would only do so much, and there was nothing we could do.
Fortunately there was still some compound berberine at home; I had the child take it, but the effect was not obvious. At daybreak I wrote my own prescription and bought five doses of Huanglian Jiedu Tang (Coptis Detoxification Decoction) from the Baitasi Pharmacy (Huanglian 9g, Zhizi 9g, Huangbo 6g, Huangqin 6g); the courier delivered the medicine by noon.
As soon as the medicine arrived, we decocted it and gave it to the child. After the first dose, the watery stools finally stopped, though the stool was still soft and loose. In the past, whenever my child's stomach went wrong from bad food, one bowl of Huanglian Jiedu Tang always stopped it; this time it was not so lucky, and several doses were needed.
I myself had caught a cold from the air conditioner a few days earlier and had barely recovered for less than 24 hours before this happened to my child; I had stayed up a whole night. Yesterday daytime I was truly exhausted, so I put down all work and rested at home all morning. The exercise of these two years had not been in vain; my body recovered quickly, and I started working again from yesterday afternoon. Today everything is back to normal.
This morning I thought it over and communicated with his teacher, asking them to give feedback to the school that, under the current pandemic's impact, the efficiency of hospital ERs is far below what it was before the pandemic; we can only try to avoid such accidents at the source. Had I not known some first-aid common sense and been able to prescribe treatment for my son, given the current hospital ER efficiency, it would truly be hard to guarantee the child's safety; thinking about it afterward gives me a fright. So I made two suggestions to the school: first, that the school do its best to ensure cafeteria hygiene; second, that the school try not to dismiss students at the hottest time of day, waiting until it cools down a bit before sending children home.
I have written out the entire rescue process in detail also in the hope that readers who encounter the same situation can learn from and refer to my approach. Under the current conditions, where the pandemic is seriously affecting normal life, work and access to medical care, we must protect ourselves well, and when problems arise we must also learn basic first-aid skills. Since the pandemic, there have already been many reports across the country of emergency patients who died needlessly because treatment was delayed. In such extraordinary times, knowing some medical common sense can sometimes save your own life.