DAD DIARY: An ill wind blows again for this Achill family

We knew it had to end, we were just hoping we might get through the Christmas first.
Our three kids had gone from March of 2024 without a trip to the doctor or a day off naíonra or school.
We weren’t getting ahead of ourselves, thinking we had built up their immune systems to unbreakable levels and could relax. We knew it couldn’t last. And so it began on Christmas Day. That night saw a trip to the on-call doctor with Frankie, who was in tremendous pain. Happy Christmas.
From there on we walked into blow after blow. Mouth ulcers for Frankie and Éamon, a chest infection for Séimí and then a 24-hour vomiting bug for Éamon.
Any parent of more than one child will know the fear and dread that hits when one of them vomits. The certain knowledge that it will spread to the other kids, and the prospect of days of cleaning up vomit from all over the house, sleepless nights and a considerable increase in crankiness, probably from both the kids and the adults.
So we did what we could to keep Éamon away from his siblings. At times it felt like trying to stop the tide, but we were very pleased with ourselves when Frankie and Séimí avoided the bug.
But it turned out that it wasn’t a vomiting bug Éamon had at all. The vomiting was part of a virus that would lead him to Mayo University Hospital.
He took longer than normal to recover from all the throwing up, and he was very lethargic. We scheduled a doctor’s appointment, and by the time we were leaving, a sudden and rapid jaundice had appeared.
Our doctor sent him up to have bloods taken, and those results showed that his liver-function numbers were off the charts.
And so three nights in the Paediatric Ward followed. His bloods were taken daily to see if the liver numbers were coming down (thankfully they were), and other tests were done to see what was actually causing the problem.
We’re still waiting for the outcome, but Éamon, thankfully, has improved dramatically.
Taking bloods from a six-year-old is not easy, and he found it tough, but as the week went on, became a trooper. And the ward’s nurses, doctors and play specialist, Breda, were brilliant.
He also enjoyed his father’s undivided attention for his spell in hospital. Not something always guaranteed at home with two other kids!
We’d some great games of Snakes and Ladders, and when we were in the Emergency Department, he was consumed a rerun of The Crystal Maze, one of my favourite shows growing up, on the TV. So we spent hours in MUH watching reruns of it on my phone in our room. It’s an ill wind that blows no good.

•  In his long-running fortnightly column, Edwin McGreal charts the ups and downs of the biggest wake-up call of his life: Parenthood.