I was curious yesterday to know how you guys feel about bringing kids for hospital visits….Totally agree on the germs and virus part…today there was a new ‘neighbour’ beside my FIL, he had tuberculosis before and it seems that he is back to the hospital to check if the illness came back to re-visit him again.

When I heard that from my FIL, I was shocked. Tuberculosis is a highly variable communicable disease, how could the hospital allow him to stay in such ‘normal’ wards?! Anyhow, the moment we knew about this, my eldest BIL and SIL brought all the kids down to get some tibits, and kept them entertained with the nibbles for as long as they could.

I’m really unhappy with the ‘way’ this hospital handled certain things, especially towards my FIL. He can eat solids on his own without vomiting or getting choked, but they still put drips on him, causing him to have terrible water retention. His hands are like boxing gloves and legs are like baby elephants. Over the last 8 days in hospital, he has gained 10kg!!! – ALL WATER, as he hardly get to eat solid food till yesterday afternoon.

My frustrated MIL requested to get the drip off my FIL but was rejected. Their reasons were: “we still need to give him the antibiotics every 6 hourly, and we could only get it into the body through the drips…”NOW THAT’S SOMETHING NEW to me (at least).

We were all concerned, so we stayed longer than usual, but the 6 kids were getting impatient at the lobby. So I (the usual kids’ nanny for every Sunday’s family gathering at my parents-in-law house) went down and played quiet games with them, while the others continued to stay with my FIL.

We played the guess-which-finger-tapped-on-head game, count the number of cars passed by the drop-off point, count how many people wore a-particular-coloured top (this kept them entertained the longest, ‘cos all I need to do is just change the colour), count how many people carry a basket of flowers get into the lift and the usual scissors-paper-stone.

Of cos’ the un-unison toilet visits helped to kill much time off too. Before long, the adults were down and ready to leave. Keeping kids entertained is easy, but keeping kids entertained with their voices down is tough, when they are such easily-excitable-creatures….

What do you do to keep the kids’ volume down but at the same time making sure they are not bored? One rule to this question – no electronic hand-held games please….

So I guess, I’ll not be bringing my boys there till my FIL’s ‘new neighbour’ is discharged or relocated.

(Thank you all of your concerns, well-wishes and prayers, especially imbeingheldhostage, thank you for keeping my FIL in your prayers still)