18mo first fever, in foreign country HELP!

[bluedaisy]

My 18 month old dd has not been feeling well since last night, this morning she had a fever of 102. We are in a foreign country so i don't know any doctors here. I took her to the local clinic to get tested for malaria. the test was negative, they think it's a bacterial infection, they told me to give paracetamol three times a day and antibiotics. she's been sleeping most of the day, she breastfeeds and is not vaccinated. she is getting plenty of liquids. i can tell she still has a fever but the thermometer is broken so i don'tknow what it is

i've heard it's not good to try and bring down a fever, and i don't want to give antibiotics if it's not necessary. all my natural health/parenting books are at home and this is the first time I've dealt with a fever...please help!

[simcon]

I noticed you hadn't gotten any responses, and I know it's scary to be in a foreign country with a sick kid...

You are on the right track keeping her hydrated!

There's a lot of info missing from your post (other symptoms, access to hospitals in your location, your assessment of the general quality of health care where you are, etc.). I'm more comfortable forgoing antibiotics in a context where I know that I'd have fast and easy access to high quality health care should the infection escalate in any way. I have been on i.v. antibiotics for lymphangitis myself, so I have experienced bacterial infections that progress--not fun. If I had a child with a fever of 101.5+ in a foreign country and the clinic said it was a suspected bacterial infection, I'd give the antibiotics along with fever reducing medication, particularly if we were somewhere hot where dehydration was a risk (this along with lots of fluids--and especially since even after several months we weren't fully acclimated to the more intense climate conditions). For a temp of 101.5 or less, I'd be less inclined to lower the fever.

If you are testing for malaria, I'm assuming you're somewhere hot/tropical--we just returned from several months in a tropical location, and my experience was that skin and other infections were much more common for us there (though we didn't get any other kinds of illness during that time--upper respiratory and gastro stuff). Some needed oral antibiotics, some went away on their own with neosporin and super-careful hygiene (we didn't get any fevers from any of those).

I'd be keeping an eye out for rashes, and for any other symptoms of other mosquito-borne illnesses (which were my real concern while we were abroad)--and if we were at risk of any (i.e. dengue was one where we were), I'd be checking the incubation period, etc. and assessing our exposure (my plan for dengue was to leave if any of us got it, as the second infection can be much more dangerous).

Personally, I'm pretty careful about antibiotic use (I'm allergic to many different medications and also wary of the ways antibiotics can disrupt our systems, and so we also try to avoid them), but with an unexplained high fever in a foreign context, I would use one. And people have different takes on fevers, but my own perspective is that low grade ones are useful in different ways (make the body hostile to the disease, keep kids slowed down so they can heal better) while higher ones have more risks (dehydration, seizures, etc.).

And although we were selective and delayed in vaccinations here, we did vaccinate the kids--for the most part--before going abroad (more potential exposure, less herd immunity, less access to hospitals in the case of complications), but if we hadn't, I'd also be on the lookout for symptoms of those illnesses.

Hope she feels better soon!