Rarely do we feel helpless when it comes to our child’s wellbeing. This wasn’t the case when he was very young and we were first learning about all of his developmental delays and special needs. We have spent the last ten years educating ourselves, learning and honing our parental skills. That doesn’t mean we have all the answers, but we have a great sense of what works for our child and how to tackle any obstacle that’s thrown our way. That is when he is well, once he becomes sick……that’s a whole other ballgame!
As we write this article, we are on day six of a virus that has consumed my son and our entire household. Six days of high fevers, massive congestion and coughing. Six days of sleepless nights, tension and stress. This would be difficult for any child, but it’s even more difficult for our child who has major sensory processing and integration issues. According to the SPD Foundation website:
Sensory processing (sometimes called “sensory integration” or SI) is a term that refers to the way the nervous system receives messages from the senses and turns them into appropriate motor and behavioral responses. Whether you are biting into a hamburger, riding a bicycle, or reading a book, your successful completion of the activity requires processing sensation or “sensory integration.”
Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD, formerly known as “sensory integration dysfunction”) is a condition that exists when sensory signals don’t get organized into appropriate responses.
There are Eight Senses and our son has struggled with many of them over the last ten years, however, the one that he still continually struggles with is the sense of taste or gustatory. The SPD Blogger Network, which has great information on sensory processing, has a piece on the 8 senses and defines taste as the sense of taste in your mouth, responsible for recognizing flavor, intensity and texture. Eating has always been an issue for our son and just about any activity that requires him to taste, such as going to the dentist, has been a nightmare. Over the years, we have become quite comfortable with being vomited on or apologizing for him vomiting on someone else. By the way, the dentist requested that we stop feeding him before we brought him in for a teeth cleaning.
After years of feeding therapy and trial and error, we have finally found a small list of go to foods that he will always eat well. We have also figured out that as long as the dentist uses flavorless products we can even have a successful visit to the dentist. The problem and the reason we feel so helpless right now is when he gets sick. There are certain medicines that he has to take to help the fever and congestion. Imagine having a young child with a high fever that every time you give him Motrin, or Tylenol or Triaminic causes him to vomit. This is our nightmare. The very medicine we need to give him to help the virus is causing him to get sicker. We end up giving him the medicine twice because the second time he can usually keep it down.
As you can imagine getting a sick child with a fever to eat or drink is very difficult. That problem is compounded by the fact that whatever he does eat and drink he will not keep it down very long. As soon as we have to give him the next dose of medicine it’s coming back up. We have spent a lot of money on Liquid Drano the last few days unclogging the bathroom sink!!!! As a matter of fact, when he was 2.5 years old he got pneumonia and was hospitalized for a week because the only way to get the antibiotics into him was intravenously (IV).
| Tweet |
We had almost forgotten how bad it is when he gets a fever. You see, the last few years he has been extremely healthy. Besides a few colds we have not had to deal with this. But the minute he got sick all of the feelings of helplessness rush back. As we said at the beginning, this is day 6, so the fever is coming back much less. Actually, so far today there has been no fever just a righteous cough, so the hope is he will be able to go back to school soon. If you read this blog do me a favor and send us good wishes because we need some. Oh no…….got to go, he is screaming from the other room that he has a bloody nose!
Update – September 21, 2011 Just got back from the Doctor and he has pneumonia in the right lung. They have given us anitbitoics in liquid form and a dropper to give it to him slowly. We made it through the first dose in about ten minutes slowly giving him the medicine with breaks for water. We are also now a proud owner of a nebulizer which we will be using for breathing treatments every 4 to 6 hours.
