A whale of a time...

On Sunday we delivered a cake in the form of a whale to my 8 yr old niece's birthday party at Dee Why. It was inspired by a cake in one of those Womens Weekly books, but I like to think I made it a little fancier with swirly silver pipe cleaner spouts and a little friendlier with a shaped licorice for an eye instead of a giant smartie. Approval from my niece came through in the words -  'it looks so nice I don't want to eat it".

Whale cake made for my niece on a foil covered board and wrapped in a gilt edged ribbon

On the way to the beach L was groaning in the back seat of the car - complaining that his ribs hurt (who knew he knew he even had ribs?). As we made our way through the suburbs beyond Lane Cove the moans took on a more urgent note. He said he felt sick and might vomit. We had to stop the car to investigate. After a while his stomach was better but his side was still hurting - I made sure it wasn't in the area of the appendix. He didn't appear to have temperature. He said it hurt when he breathed and when I tried to touch his side. I got in the back seat and tried to comfort him. He kept twisting and moaning so I got out my new iPhone (still getting used to having it and all its possible uses!) to look up a local medical centre. We found one not to far on our way to the beach - no appointments necessary, a 20 minute wait and $80 per appointment. As P pulled up to park I urged him to go into the paid parking behind the shopping centre - money was no object at this moment in time!

When L got out of the car he seemed quite up in spirits and then started running up the ramp to the shopping centre. At that point I was starting to feel he was probably OK. We debated whether or not to go ahead to the medical centre and decided to ask at the chemist first. They were worried by the 'hurting when breathing' bit and advised on seeing the doctor. Even though I felt L was now getting back to normal, the seed of doubt took hold and we went ahead. The doctor couldn't explain it, but said it may have been a muscular pain - maybe a pulled muscle... She gave L some Nurofen and said to come back if it got worse. When we got to the beach L was back to normal and had a great time swimming and running around with his cousins - he even enjoyed a piece of the whale cake!

Moral of the story: go with your gut feeling and enjoy your cake!