Horrible June

Apologize for this long silence. June has been a horrible month. The whole family took turns to fall sick with Matthew being the hardest hit.

What happened was Jonathan started with a running nose. Then I caught the bug from him, as I had posted before. Then Darren was next. After which, Jonathan came back with running nose and phelgmy cough. It was very bad and he had to be nebulized as it became bronchitis.

Jonathan on his neubulizer treatment

We took him off from school for a week to let him recover. Then Matthew caught the bug and being the youngest, he got really sick. At one stage, PD suspected he had pneumonia but decided that even if we admitted Matthew to hospital, the treatment would be the same.

Matthew - high fever in the middle of the night
and a phlegmy cough 

Matthew is on antibiotic regimen for 7 days and poor boy, he has very bad diarrhoea from the antibiotics and his butt is red and painful. He had been on nebulizer for a week and he has not gotten any better. Still a phlegmy cough that disrupted his sleep and he has been drinking very poorly.


And did I mention the horrible and terrible haze too? It made everything doubly bad. In a scamper to get an air purifier, we resorted to order from catalogue and the only air purifier that was available then at Best Denki was this EuropAce model which cost a hefty $499. It didn't had any other function except air purifying for a 30m2 area, so we had to buy another small humidifier (same brand) for $99. I know the sales were laughing their way to the bank. We made an order on Tues, the very night PSI hit 321 and I was glad that EuropAce honoured their deal and sent the air purifier to our house on Friday (the day the PSI hit 401).

our prized possession in Hazy times - EuropAce Air Purifier

1st runner up - Humidifier

Mask was another much sought after product after air purifier. I first ordered 2 kid's masks and an adult cloth mask from 3M Nexcare via gmarket. Then when N95 masks were sold out at retail pharmacy, I decided to purchase the N95 masks online. I also purchased 3-ply kid's masks when we were at the PD's clinic. Before I received my online ordered masks, Unity @ Clementi Mall had N95 masks. So we queued and bought 10 pieces for $2.50 each. By then, the haze was starting to clear up. It was only this week, I got my online ordered masks. You could guess how much I spent trying to get my hands on masks. On side note, we are ready to combat haze now!

Oh yes! We are better equipped now.

At work place, my colleague, on his initiative, got us N95 masks. We were given 1 mask each and this sight of me with my N95 mask and shades was pretty common. Mask to avoid breathing in the harmful particles and shades to act as a barrier for direct eye contact with the haze particles. (oh yes, my eyes were stinging when the haze was really bad).

All geared up for my weekend marketing
(note the smoky background)

Back to the story on haze. We were trying to fend off the haze by shutting our windows tight. The air con was on perpetually. I can imagine our shocking sky high electrical bill next month. Needless to say, our medical bill has also broken our all times record.


One liner to summarize this entire period - June is really such a horrible month!