Our Family Journal

This is largely an update on our post of my learning patience thru all my patients earlier in September. The lesson is ongoing! It appears that while Matthew was indeed getting sick, his vomiting at school may have actually been his first migraine. We’re keeping an eye on him now in light of that. Emily’s been averaging 2-3 headaches a week and as many visits to the nurse’s office. We’re working together (including lots of phone calls - I’ve got the nurse’s direct line - and one meeting w/her teacher after school plus many notes back and forth) to learn the best way to help her work this through. She is learning to manage them this year with lots of practice. She’s learning to rate the headache (scale of 0-5) and helping the nurse to determine when she needs medicine and when she needs fluids or some crackers, and when she needs to sleep/come home (only once has been that bad so far). I’m spending a lot of time in this area helping her out, checking on the details of what’s happening and developing a course of action for at school, and I’m also learning how my behaviors affect her (her two worst days have been ones where I have been unkind to her).

Nursing Jonathan actually got worse there while the kids were sick - he bit me again so badly I was dripping blood and I called the doctor’s office, got the nurse on the line immediately and asked her if I could stop nursing him on that one side to let it heal and did she think that would be ok (I was looking for permission I think). So for four or five days, I just fed him from one side and pumped the other to keep the milk flowing. He did enjoy drinking the milk from a cup and I was able to completely heal without getting bitten again or reinfected. He’s nursing 5-6 times a day now and we’re enjoying it again. He usually sleeps through the night though not always (he got up and screamed for an hour last night for example). We are still short on sleep but it’s improved. He’s a healthy boy and is doing the usual Tupaj trick of dropping on the weight curve between 6 mos. and a year. Still, he’s got a double chin and is well over 19 lbs. He loves solid foods including cheerios, chicken, potatoes, cauliflower, broccoli, and squash.

Little Lizziebear had her last nutrition visit this morning and weighed 22 lbs., 3 oz which is right on her adjusted curve. She’s doing PT just once a month and her yearly review of services last week went well. The plan is to phase all the extra services out between now and her birthday assuming she stays on track.

Matthew had another asthma “coughing spell” last night (first time in a while). It seems to have been triggered by hysterical crying; he was told to go back to bed and we’d be up in a minute to look at “it” (whatever it was that was bothering him that had him get out of bed because he heard me come in from my friend’s funeral service) and he didn’t like that answer. Albuterol did the trick and his peak flows improved right away. We’ve taken him off all the allergy medications and Emily is still on one of the two (we had to got back on both for a week after she started coughing again promptly after taking her off them both and now we’re weaning her one at a time).

I guess we’re healthy enough but there’s always something it seems! If you’re wondering if we’ve disappeared from the face of the earth, intersperse all the above with school, necessary errands, church, sleeping, eating, homework, and caring for the home, you can basically see why. We are still here of course and welcome any one to email or stop by whenever you’d like! The “schedule for the year” is falling into place (the last pieces got added to my master puzzle just last week) and we will now be able to take it all before the Lord and say “ok, now, here are all the options, possibilities, apparent responsibilities, needs, desires, concerns, etc. . . . What does our life look like for the next X mos.?” and trust him to make it all clear. And as always, I’m learning patience (impatiently) and need lots of prayer!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 3rd, 2006 at 12:16 pm, and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.