Cough Extinguisher

Poor Craig caught a cold just after returning to Taipei from sunny Kaohsiung on Saturday (Feb. 28). It stayed with him for days and became worse over time until it became bad enough on Tuesday (Mar. 3) that Craig's Mum called Craig's Dad at work to ask him to come home quickly so he could help take Craig to the doctor.

Despite taking medicine for a few days at that stage, Craig was wheezing audibly with every breath and it sounded very much like asthma to Craig's Dad. When Craig was taken to the doctor he explained that the medical definition says that, for a child so young, Craig would need to suffer breathing diffulties this bad three times in one year for him to be considered asthmatic. "Nice for the doctors but not much good for the poor little boy struggling to get oxygen into his lungs," was Craig's Dad's first thought.

The cough medicine prescribed to Craig has a lovely Chinese name. The first two characters of the name, if translated directly to English mean "Cough Extinguisher".


Craig has been going to see the doctor every morning since the (not yet) asthma diagnosis. These days he doesn't cry in the waiting room, just plays quietly. He cries plenty when facing the doctor.


To make matters worse, it started raining on Thursday night. So, the walk to the doctor's office on Friday morning was done in the rain.


And again on Saturday. The good news is that the wheezing is much improved and Craig is going to be healthly again very soon.


Late Update:
The photo below was taken on Wednesday (Mar. 11) on the way home from the doctor. No more medicine was prescribed and the very next day he was pronounced fit and healthy. Phew!