Yesterday when I posted the little guy was at school and hadn't had his dose yet for the day. It is a good thing I posted when I did or I may have been too discouraged to do it at all. He finished his third day of school yesterday and he is doing fairly well except for a few things. With all the "new" things he is being exposed to, he seems to be leaving eating and drinking much during the day until he gets home. I made sure he has money on his account to buy milk and he refuses to do so. Not a problem if he would drink the bottle of water I put in his lunchbox, but he won't. For just any kid this would not be a problem and would work itself out. For a kid who has to come home and dose his peanut, this does not make for a good afternoon. When I picked him up yesterday he was sweaty and you could tell he had been having fun on the playground. That was great to see. But in my "medical" perspective I had a bad feeling about his peanut since he was overheated and dehydrated from lack of fluid intake. He drank water in the car on the way home and I filled him up with a heavy snack at home. He is starved when he gets home and will eat anything I put in front of him. The little guy ate his peanut and went on drawing pictures of houses--his latest craze. Within 15 minutes he got up and ran to the bathroom and vomited. It even came out his nose so he was screaming from that. He then started sneezing (at least 20 times) and had excessive runny nose. I had to give him benadryl his symptoms were so bad. His poor nose closed up so badly he couldn't even blow it. No other symptoms though, thank goodness. After about an hour he was more himself and he did eat a good dinner. But as soon as dinner was over it was time for bed! Poor guy! He didn't even get a chance to have any fun after his school day. Hopefully I feel more guilty and bad about it than him. I tried to tell him how important drinking fluids at school is. I pack plenty of water bottles for him in his book bag, it is just a matter of him learning to speak up for himself and learning to take care of himself. I hope getting sick with his peanut will help him learn sooner rather than later. We have all sacrificed so much over the last 4 months to have something like this bring the study to an end. But, school is priority number one now.
I am anxious to see how he is when I pick him up today. He was still very congested this morning from his allergies. I think maybe today I will only give him half a dose of his peanut and let his immune system settle down. He does have to go back next week for a dose increase back to 75mg. I pray we can get the school routine settled and give him the best chance to succeed--on all fronts. He is a brave little kid and I am so proud of him.
to be continued...
Wednesday, August 29, 2012
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
A step back and a slow creep forward--August 28, 2012
Remember me? Yes, I do post here. It has been a while, too long in fact since my last post. We have had some interesting times here in the little guy's house so I just couldn't find it in me to put into words all we have been through. I believe we left off on 7/27 with the little guy getting sick from the new dose. Well, he got sick again with the 75mg dose on 7/29/12. That time it stayed down for 1 1/2 hours before coming up. Since the allergist had left to visit Mickey Mouse for the week I decided to double his H2 blocker dose to twice a day and see what happened. That next day his Nana ended up in the hospital unexpectedly for a week so I had a lot on my plate...trying to keep all the news from him as to not upset him and cause him a greater chance to react (the allergist says that stress has a higher likely hood of causing a reaction than illness), and also trying to be at the hospital as much as I could to be with my mom. Luckily the good Lord must have known I could only handle so much that week and the little guy did fine with his doses. He had a fun birthday, or as fun as we could make it with everything we had going on! Give the kid some Legos and he will never be disappointed!
All was well until 8/5/12 when he got sick again with his dose. I was hoping this was a fluke but all week, even though he kept it down, he never really looked good for the 2 hours we had to wait it out. Monday the 6th came and he got sick yet again. This time his nose became really stuffy and runny and he complained of an itchy throat after vomiting. I had to give him benadryl since it appeared his reaction was worse than it has ever been. By now, the allergist was back from vacation and I gave him a ring. His advice despite our efforts was to go back down on his dose to the 50mg daily that he had done well with. He feels he may be one of those people who needs longer at these higher doses and maybe the 75mg was the "threshold" that his immune system has to accept. So, needless to say we didn't have a clinic visit on 8/8/12 like we were supposed to. We just picked up our new bag of 50mg doses and restarted that at home. His allergies stayed flared up all that week. He has a lot more sneezing and runny nose in the morning and allergic shiners under his eyes when the peanut dose is bothering him. He did well and we cut the H2 blocker dose back to once daily from then on.
He did have one more reaction the following week. This was the day we were going to have a visit from my mother's cousin from Hawaii. The little guy had never met her and this was a special day. After dosing that day I could tell the dose was not going well and he was not himself. Of all days, it would have to be the day he got the chance to visit with a distant relative! argh! He didn't get sick by his 2 hour mark so I wasn't sure what was going on with him. We traveled back to our house and 4 1/2 hours after taking his dose he finally vomited. Of course his sister witnessed it and it scared her so badly she was shrieking and refused to try to "potty-train" for the next 2 days.
After that, all of his days went well. His next clinic visit was supposed to be 8/22/12 but after some thinking I talked with the allergist to see if we HAD to go up that week of if we could hold the course. See, the little guy started Kindergarten on 8/24, so knowing how stressed he might get from that I was scared to death to go back up right at this pivotal time in his life (and mine!). He agreed that leaving him at 50mg for another 2 weeks would be fine. So far he has been doing great and school is going better than expected. It certainly has not been without tears, but he seems happy, talks about the kids and tells me about his days.
Much has happened this month--out of many bad circumstances has come much to also be thankful for. But let's just say I'll be glad to turn my calendar to September...
to be continued...
All was well until 8/5/12 when he got sick again with his dose. I was hoping this was a fluke but all week, even though he kept it down, he never really looked good for the 2 hours we had to wait it out. Monday the 6th came and he got sick yet again. This time his nose became really stuffy and runny and he complained of an itchy throat after vomiting. I had to give him benadryl since it appeared his reaction was worse than it has ever been. By now, the allergist was back from vacation and I gave him a ring. His advice despite our efforts was to go back down on his dose to the 50mg daily that he had done well with. He feels he may be one of those people who needs longer at these higher doses and maybe the 75mg was the "threshold" that his immune system has to accept. So, needless to say we didn't have a clinic visit on 8/8/12 like we were supposed to. We just picked up our new bag of 50mg doses and restarted that at home. His allergies stayed flared up all that week. He has a lot more sneezing and runny nose in the morning and allergic shiners under his eyes when the peanut dose is bothering him. He did well and we cut the H2 blocker dose back to once daily from then on.
He did have one more reaction the following week. This was the day we were going to have a visit from my mother's cousin from Hawaii. The little guy had never met her and this was a special day. After dosing that day I could tell the dose was not going well and he was not himself. Of all days, it would have to be the day he got the chance to visit with a distant relative! argh! He didn't get sick by his 2 hour mark so I wasn't sure what was going on with him. We traveled back to our house and 4 1/2 hours after taking his dose he finally vomited. Of course his sister witnessed it and it scared her so badly she was shrieking and refused to try to "potty-train" for the next 2 days.
After that, all of his days went well. His next clinic visit was supposed to be 8/22/12 but after some thinking I talked with the allergist to see if we HAD to go up that week of if we could hold the course. See, the little guy started Kindergarten on 8/24, so knowing how stressed he might get from that I was scared to death to go back up right at this pivotal time in his life (and mine!). He agreed that leaving him at 50mg for another 2 weeks would be fine. So far he has been doing great and school is going better than expected. It certainly has not been without tears, but he seems happy, talks about the kids and tells me about his days.
Much has happened this month--out of many bad circumstances has come much to also be thankful for. But let's just say I'll be glad to turn my calendar to September...
to be continued...
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