Leaping From The Box

Has it really been a week since I last posted here? Wow! I’ve been so busy with office duties and running kids here and there. My desk is a lot cleaner! And the bills are all current! So some things have been accomplished! Unfortunately, updating my website was not included in that list of accomplishments. That was July’s agenda, but somehow here it is the 25th and I’ve not even begun. And boy, do I have a lot of updates.

Yesterday Charles met with Dr. Debra Gilliam from Alternative Medicine Associates. She seemed pretty sure she would be able to help Charles and I sure hope so! It was an expensive visit and none of it covered by our medical insurance. He now has several supplements and homeopathic remedies to take over the next 12 weeks, along with some dietary changes to make. And then on October 16 he return to see if all this has helped any. She also suggested that Charles keep a food diary, but I don’t see that happening! The most difficult dietary change is no gluten, no wheat. I bought some oat flour and some spelt flour, both of which the naturopath suggested would be better for Charles than wheat.

David has his college physical tomorrow. Which reminds me, I still need to double check with the college that a letter from his doctor will be all that is needed for a medical waiver on the tetanus shot. My mom wrote me last week to tell me that she had suffered from an allergic reaction to a tetanus shot about fifteen years ago and her doctor told her then not to ever have another tetanus shot or it might be fatal. She thought she had told me that before, but mentioned it again after reading my blog entry about Charles’ latest “episode.” I sure don’t’ remember hearing about that before, but I’m glad to know it now. Perhaps it will provide added incentive for the doctor tomorrow to provide that medical waiver.

The kittens are getting cuter every day! Today the one’s here in my office finally got brave enough to escape from their box, or at least I discovered one of them out this morning when I came in to check my e-mail. I think it’s just about time to move them outside, as I do not want to have a litter box in here. The other kittens in the living room just have their eyes open, but I may have to find another spot for them. The mama kitty seems to be disrupting the wires back there that are hooked to the TV and receiver and our TV reception has been disappearing. Somewhere there’s a cord loose!

Well, time to wake up some boys and begin working on the website updates. People are e-mailing me asking me when I’m going to make the changes that they sent me weeks ago!

Another night of interrupted sleep, another day of hiding yawns and thinking of a nap! Normally the cause is the occasional bout of night sweats or the more frequent waking up in the middle of the night and not being able to get back to sleep. But not last night, or rather, early this morning. This morning at 3:45 my cell phone rings and I know instantly that it has to be Charles. Which means that he’s having troubles again with his “funny feelings” in his head that preclude full blown episodes of violence. Luckily this time he woke up before it had reached the full-blown stage, so a dose of antihistamine, some talk about how he was feeling, how long he had been awake and how long he had been asleep prior to awakening, and then he went back to sleep. But I didn’t! I was wide-awake from then until Bill’s alarm went off at 6. And only then did I begin to doze off for a few minutes before I had to get up and made Bill’s breakfast.

I had been worried about the possibility of Charles having another episode. Sunday we went over to Kat’s and mowed her lawn. Bill got into the kudzu on the edge of the property with the weedeater and had Charles go behind him with the push mower. Unfortunately, Charles found a bee’s nest and got stung on his legs several times. He seemed fine yesterday, but still, I wasn’t surprised when that phone rang this morning. The episodes seem to hit when his immune system is working hard to overcome illness and so I thought bee stings have the same effect as a fever.

May 26th was the last time Charles needed the antihistamine to ward of an episode, so it’s been less than two months. Prior to that he went just about three months. I had hoped that the time between would have lengthened, not shortened. That would have fed my hope that this whole nightmare would just eventually fade away, that his body would recover on his own from the tetanus vaccination. But it doesn’t appear as though that is happening. Time to make that appointment with the naturopath, since both his pediatrician and the neurologist he was referred to were not able to find anything wrong. And I’m hoping that the pediatrician will agree with me that David doesn’t need a tetanus vaccination for his college physical. The college indicated that they might accept a letter of medical waiver from the doctor. I’ve got to double check next week when the person in charge at the college’s health department is back from vacation. But I am very leery of unnecessarily exposing another child to that vaccination! It certainly has wreaked havoc upon Charles’ body.