When a baby is born in the Czech republic, mothers are given not only the health and vaccination card but also a brochure about vaccination schemes, first aid, teeth growing, growth graphs, developement of a baby untill their first year and other more or less usefull information. I can still remember the sentence about fever there: Body temperature above 38⁰C should be treated always!
But there are many texts and studies telling you that a fever your baby is suffering from is just a proper immune reaction. Our immune system tries to kill all the viruses and bacteria in our body, or heats the body at least to stop reproduction of these organisms. And all the medicine treating fever just suppress unpleasant feelings connected to fever: a headache, sweating, a limbs ache and so on. So why should we eat such medicine at all? The temperature won´t rise to infinity. And if it is not over 40⁰C it won´t hurt you! It sounds so logical!
Did you know that the immune miracle with temperature works even when it is only slightly above 37⁰C? Other organisms which do not answer to this temperature wouldn´t do so even if the temperature was over 45⁰C. I suppose they answer just to pasteurization or boiling J
Now personaly: When I checked my two-year-old son´s temperature, the thermometer showed 38,9⁰C. Appart from my suspicion that it doesn´t work properly I had to decide whether to give my son paracetamol or not. Before I could reach any decision this started to happen:
My son casted his eyes up to heaven, changed colour from red to blueish white, started to shake all over his body and, what was the most frightening, seemed to stop breathing. Believe me that your imagination is far beyond the reality, as noone who has never experinced seeing their child in such a state is able to imagine the horror. First I tried to call him back by gently slapping his breast and shouting: Breath, my dear, breath! But nothing happened. Then I took his shaking body into my arms and run to the living room. Call for the ambulance! I cried to my mother. She froze in a shock, her eyes deepened and she started murmuring: Oh, my god! Oh, my god! So I called the ambulance myself. I was really lucky because I knew how to name the situation: febrile convulsions. This saved time. I quickly described the situation and the state of my son, I was given advice and was asked for our address. The ambulance was coming. I was in a shock, my legs almost gave way under me but the computer within me switched to autopilot. I managed to run down the stairs to the bathroom where I started showering my son´s trunk with cool water. The boy started crying – so he was breathing! Welcome back! But every time I stopped cooling him his eyes went up again and I felt as if I was loosing my son. Every minute took at least an hour. Doesn´t the ambulance have any problems with finding our house?
Finally the ambulance came, the doctor administrated some medicine to calm down my son´s overheated brain and then took us to hospital.
He is fine now, my son, sleeping in his bed. But I will be a nervous wreck every time his body temperature rises. This experince scared me to death: Maybe a fever IS a proper immune reaction. Maybe one shouldn´t treat it every time it occurs but when the body temperature rises over 38⁰C I WILL.
