Bad News – Gaspar is Sick Again

I’m very sad to report that Gaspar has pneumonia again. Gaspar is 3 years and 6 months old now, and he has had pneumonia several times in past few months. Gaspar’s mother, Margarita, brought him to me because he was acting lethargic and she knew he was sick. I counted his breaths. “Oh my God,” I said. “He’s got 61 breaths per minute and at his age he is only supposed to have 40 per minute.” So I gave the mother medicine and explained the dosage very carefully in her native Ixil language. She needs to give him the antibiotic Amoxicillin every 8 hours for 7 days. I told her she will need to wake up if she is sleeping so she can give Gaspar his medicine according to this schedule. She said she would do this, so he will feel better, and if he doesn’t feel better, she will give him more. “No, no,” I said. “Don’t give more or less medicine to Gaspar, because this will not do him any good. The measurement of one tablespoon is the right amount of medicine that he needs according to his age, weight and sickness. Just one tablespoon every 8 hours for 7 days. If you give him more medicine than that, it will make him more sick.” I told Margarita that she will not see him get better with the first dose. He should start feeling and looking better after two days or so.

I reminded Margarita about the danger signs of pneumonia. I told her to check Gaspar’s tummy tomorrow and if his breaths are coming faster than today she should bring him to me right away because this means he might be getting worse. “Let’s pray to God that this will not happen,” I said. “And with you giving him the medicine correctly, he will be starting to get better tomorrow.”

I also told her to please give him a lot of water to drink and nutritious food. And I repeated the instructions for the medicine again. I told her I would come to her house on Thursday to check on how Gaspar is doing, but if he gets worse during this time, she should not wait and she should come see me.

Margarita said the problem is that when Gaspar gets sick, he doesn’t want to eat. “Yesterday I had food and asked him if he wanted to eat, but he didn’t want it at all. So he hasn’t been eating since yesterday in the afternoon.”

“Yes, when they are sick, children stop eating,” I said. “But what you can do is ask him – keep on asking him if he is hungry and try to get him to eat a little bit. And it’s best if he eats more than three times a day.”

Here is a video of me explaining these things to Margarita: