Medicinal compounds

April has been suffering from a cough for a few days so this morning I took her to see a doctor. This being Germany, she doesn't go to my doctor. No: she has a specialist Kinder Arzt (children's doctor). So, off we went to see Dr Kinder Arzt.

(As an aside, when we first met this Kinder Artz he reminded us of Art Garfunkel, because his hair stood several centimetres proud of his scalp, held up by its frizzy texture. For this reason he is always referred to as Arzt Garfunkel in our household.
I was therefore slightly disappointed to find that he has recently cut his trademark hair. We are sticking with the nickname though.)

Anyway, after examining April, Arzt Garfunkel declared that she did, indeed, have a cough. No surprise to me. I hoped for a prescription for a simple-to-administer medicinal compound. What I got was a prescription for five different homeopathic medicines. The instructions for ingestion were far from simple:

• 1 cough medicine to be taken 3 times a day
• 2 medicines in pill form to be taken - 3 of each - at 7 am and again at 3 pm
• 2 different medicines in pill form to be taken - 3 of each - at 11 am and again at 7 pm

Arzt Garfunkel had to write all this down for me, to avoid confusion (and, let's face it, my brain is too busy making another baby for me to be able to remember all these rules).

Goodness knows what April is going to think of this regime. When she is ill she doesn't approve of any interference to her plans: she gets annoyed if I simply change her pants. What is she going to be like when I try to keep her still to administer all these medicines?

After all that effort, I hope the medicines work!