The genetic trifecta

The Trickster and I don't look anything alike. When my blonde haired, blue eyed boy was born it appeared he must have actually been a clone of Map Guy and received no genetic material from me at all... this past week we've discovered that he shares more in common with me than we thought. Which means it's been a pretty shit week. 

It started on Tuesday (well the week didn't start on Tuesday, the shit did) in the form of Tricky having an anaphylaxis reaction to cashew nuts and needing a trip to the emergency room for adrenaline and a night in the observation ward.

It finished with a trip back to that same emergency room and a weekend stay on the ward, when Tricky couldn't breathe on Friday night.

Breaking my heart

He was a little bit sniffley through the day but it wasn't until night time when he really started to become unwell - he was clingy, pale, couldn't sleep, threw up some rather toxic looking green bile and struggled with his breathing. He was working so hard to breathe, with his little tummy sucking right in, that he couldn't do anything else and sat motionless in my arms as we entered the emergency room.

On arrival we again went straight through although this time he was triaged as a level two (emergency - could become life threatening), not a level one (life threatening) like it was on Tuesday... and in my unparalleled ability to clutch at straws I'm chalking that up as a win. I took my child to hospital before he died, yay me!

He needed nebulizers every twenty minutes for the first two hours, and since it takes fifteen minutes to have it, it meant he was off the drugs for only five minutes before needing more, and in those five minutes he was on oxygen or his saturation would plummet to the mid 70s. Scary, scary stuff.

I'm not sure if it was because of the toxic green vomit, which could have been a sign of an infection, or just because there was space, but we got our own isolation room which meant a private bathroom, enough room for a fold-a-bed, and a door to close and block out the cries of the rest of the poor sick kids on our ward.

New jimjams are a perquisite for hospital stays

He was the perfect patient. He let them poke and prod, he left the mask on his face and the pulseoximeter on his toe. Well, he did... until it was almost 9pm when he'd finally gone to sleep and his oxygen levels kept crashing. Putting the mask on him woke not only him but the entire bloody ward.

The nurses resorted to nasal prongs and bandaging his hands to stop him pulling them off. Thanks to crappy medical dramas, I always associate nasal prongs with people who are dying, so it's safe to say I went pretty emo around then.

I was sure nothing could perk me up until an awesome friend organized a delivery of snacks for us. It's amazing just how much a kind gesture can buoy your spirits, especially when that gesture involves chips and Coke. But even full sugar soft drink can't keep you happy when your little boy is laying in hospital.

I settled in to my bed, which almost collapsed every time I breathed, and tried to get a little bit of sleep because I knew it was going to be a long night... and I wasn't wrong.

Overnight, he needed medication every two hours, and every two hours he would scream and violently thrash around... so every two hours I would hold him down as he protested and sing to him through my tears as my heart shattered in to a thousand pieces.

Then, like magic, as soon as the sun rose and he had a breastfeed he was back to being a model patient. I suppose I can't blame him - I don't like to be woken up either.

Feeling much happier

Normally the powers that be don't give a diagnosis of asthma for a first attack... because there is no way of knowing if it will happen again. When he was discharged on Sunday, the doctors took one look at his Tuesday admission, his eczema and the fact that I was hospitalized a dozen times or so with asthma as a kid and chalked him up as asthmatic immediately.

Snuggles at home

So it turns out he did get some genes from me. The allergy, eczema and asthma genes - a rather shitty genetic trifecta.

What did your kids inherit from you that you wish they hadn't?