More on doctors and life in general

Sid has had fever since Saturday. Last night it was particularly high and being used as we are to 24-hour helplines in the US, we called the hospital (where his ped consults) at 6 am. This is a children's hospital, quite well known in the area. The guy who answered the phone told us there are no pediatricians there at this hour, best thing would be to talk to the doctor. He just gave us the doctor's home number. I spoke first to her husband and then to the sleepy doctor herself. She told us to sponge him down with cold water and he'll be fine. My MIL seconded this suggestion and we did it, it did help him.

Later in the day, I took Ani to see her for his immunization shots. She asks me how Sid is, and considering that today was his 4th day with fever, dashed off a prescription for an antibiotic.

Some glaring differences between US pediatricians and peds here - In India, most peds don't check for ear infections, which is one of the first things they do in the US. On the other hand, antibiotics are not the first line of defence in India. But, they freely prescribe antibiotics on the phone or without seeing the patient.

Guess there are good and bad things in both approaches. However the ability to wake up the doctor at 6 am and speak to her was just great. No way would they hand out the doc's home number in the US.

In other news,Arjun got his 3rd tooth. Sid is yet to start on the toothy front.

D got his car finally - Maruti Swift (http://www.marutiswift.com) - Azure grey color. Car looks very nice, feels solid. Maruti's well oiled marketing machine tried to sell all their rust proof paint, insurance, finance etc etc but by now we've seen it all to get the "topi" put on us any more.

We're now in our 4th month here. Slowly getting adjusted to a different cadence of life. There are infinite number of good things about coming back and infinite number of things we miss about our old life in the US.

Staying at home makes me restless but on the other hand I can't imagine leaving the kids and dashing off to the other end of the city and putting in long work days right now. I hope to find some happy medium one of these days. In the meanwhile, my days are filled with baby and kid stuff, packing lunch for D, calling the washer/dryer repair guy/plumber/water supply guy, picking up Ani from school, shopping at Foodworld, taking kids for their shots etc. Am quite a regular
soccer mom now, the Santro being my minivan of choice :)