Dengue Scare

Phone call from Dad & Mum’s office to me, at home, rotting in pain with a PMS backache.

DAD: “Ah Ping, can you bring the maid to the doc? She has fever and is feeling itchy.”

Ah Ping: “Can I talk to Mum?”

DAD: “Sure, but she’s on the phone now. I can put you on call waiting, call back later” [Phone goes dead]

10 minutes later…

MUM: “Can you bring the maid to the doc? She has fever, and is itchy all over. It’s Dengue Fever. I left her card and money at your study desk”

Ah Ping: “Is the body covered with little red dots?”

MUM: “Yah”

After call to clinic… circuit driving across Siglap and mad dash across car park to clinic before it closed in 10 minutes, we caught the Malay-speaking Chinese Doc as he was going out for lunch. Nurses looked grumpy and I felt a little guilty. The ministry of environment people were just at our place last week checking drainage systems for mosquito larvae colonies.

5 minutes later…

DOC: "it’s not Dengue. She also said she has no fever. It is just a rash caused by allergy, she had scratched herself some serious looking red welts here”.

Ah Ping: “Ok, can you please explain to her in Malay it’s just an allergy? She will cry later if she thinks she’s very sick”

DOC: [In Malay to maid] “You are not going to die.”

Nurse: “She says she using a new soap brand. Better change back to old soap brand”.

15 minutes later…we got home and I tracked down the culprit soap. Palmolive! I quickly passed her three bars of Lux.

From Dengue to Hives, I thought we did pretty well.