Читать книгу A Spoonful of Sugar - Liz Fraser - Страница 31

These days a child with a severe stomach bug is more likely to be either packed off to school with a smile and an ‘Oh, she’s totally fine now – just a twenty-four-hour thing!’ or be bundled off immediately to the doctor who would be expected, and most probably pressured, to say something conclusive at the end of his three-minute examination, prescribe some ointment/pills/tonic or treatment that was guaranteed to rid the patient of all her woes within six hours and do so without looking the slightest bit as though the adult bringing her in was totally barking and should take a chill pill herself.

The level of concern, worry and even occasional panic levelled at the health of our children seems to me to be deeply ironic, given that kids have a far higher chance of survival today than they have ever had. We are bombarded with news stories every week telling us of yet more ‘killer bugs’, poisonous food, deadly additives or hidden nasties just waiting to zap your kids into oblivion.

As well as actually getting ill less frequently than ever, we also have more understanding of the causes and cures of most of the common ailments that befall our little darlings than anyone could have dreamed of fifty years ago. We can do more than ever to avoid illness and treat it effectively if it does strike, and yet we worry like nervous fleas about our children conking out at the first sign of a sniffle or sneeze.

We are a nation of health obsessives who pop pills as though they’re going out of fashion and live on a diet of hysterical, often misinformed or exaggerated health-scare news.

So what can Granny tell us about dealing with common illnesses in her day that might calm our nerves and save the NHS spending several billion pounds a year on unnecessary antibiotics?

‘Well, we had all sorts of childhood diseases that, thanks to vaccinations, you lot don’t come across so much any more.’

‘Good point. And would you call a doctor about those straight away – they could be very serious.’

‘Not always. You knew chicken pox when you saw it and there’s not much you can do about it until it goes away. If anything you wanted the whole family to catch it and be done with it!’

Aha, the famous chicken-pox parties; very sensible idea I think. Nothing more annoying than spending one entire summer holiday seeing Child A through chicken pox only for Child B to get it in time for Christmas.

‘You had to be careful of a child with mumps,’ she recalls, with a somewhat sterner than usual expression, adding another line to her already time-worn but still beautiful face. ‘You had to keep them in the dark, as the mumps really affected their eyesight, and they had to be warm. Mine all had mumps, but it didn’t last long. You just expected it then.’

My mother-in-law has told me of the fearful time when my husband contracted mumps as a child. When he was four she could get the thumb and index finger of one of her hands to meet around his thigh bone. She still speaks of it as one of the worst episodes of her life, and it’s a terror I can only hope I never come to experience – that of believing you might lose a child. And to think that I recently panicked because I’d run out of Calpol when one of my kids had a slight fever – what a nincompoop!

Granny goes on, rubbing her ankle in the hope of getting some blood into it. It looks totally lifeless, cold and white – much like the doctor who allegedly prescribed her a dose of aspirin and a hot water bottle would look now if I could get my hands on him.

‘Now whooping cough was a nasty one. Such a noise they made! I put Ken and Alison in a room together, just whooping and whooping away they were. Such a racket. And German measles – we used to have German measles parties as soon as one of the girls got it. We didn’t have the vaccinations then. And we certainly didn’t mollycoddle them.’

She looks straight at me now, not in an accusatory way, but I feel she’s trying to drive a point home here about the level of fussing we modern mums do.