A twist

The appointment was a week after discharged from hospital. It involved blood test and then consultation with doctor. For no strong reason other than wanting to trim a little the time spent, I asked Ban to drive us, despite the hospital being a mere 20-min away (normally I wouldn't want to involve him for such short non-strenuous appointment). I am grateful that he agreed because it went on much longer than expected.

What happened was that after "recovering" for a few days, unexpectedly mum developed the itchy rashes again two days before the appointment date and condition worsened (there was discharge) around her groin area the next day. The doctor was quite alarmed by this. His initial guess was that she was allergic to prawns (she had it prior to reappearance of the rashes) despite not being the case previously. The summary is that mum could be allergic to prawns all the while but it reaches critical mass only now. Anyway, he decided to defer to his skin specialist colleague, who could see us shortly later, thank goodness. As for the blood test, all is clear. He was worried about her kidney.

The skin specialist asked us for details after reading the electronic medical record as well as the referral letter from her colleague. Then she checked mum and kept exclaiming in an alarming tone at how red mum's rashes were. She took a sample of the peeled skin for testing. Diagnosis: fungal infection (not based on lab test). The telling sign was where most of the rashes were: where the skin folds e.g. inner thighs, armpits and beneath the breasts. She was confident that mum's not allergic to prawn because she has no adverse reaction for 70 odd years.

Medicine: anti-fungal pills, anti-fungal cream and antihistamine. To help us saved money, she asked us to get the pills from the retail pharmacy at the hospital, rather than from the hospital's pharmacy. Also, she prescribed only 2 tubes of the cream and asked us to get more from retail pharmacy once finished. Next appointment is a week time.

The next day, the redness was noticeably much less but the level of itchiness was still the same.