Life is always full of ups and downs, for everyone. Let’s face it, life would be boring if it followed the same monotonous pattern day in day out, we’d be craving for some sort of excitement to break up the tedium.
At the moment, I would honestly say I’d quite welcome tedious and monotonous! And that’s no exaggeration!
The past 3 weeks have tested me almost to the point of breaking. It takes a lot for me to admit that. Everyone who knows me, knows that I hide how bad things can be, especially with Callum. People don’t want to hear how much of a struggle it is on a daily basis, so I hide a lot of what we go through, and the constant battles we face.
Dealing with Callum and all of his issues, is challenge enough. Add the past 3 weeks to the mix, and you reach the tipping point.
It started with Callum having his nasty asthma attack 3 weeks ago, which I’ve previously blogged about here
1 week after this (so 2 weeks ago), Callum was due to have a check-up, and whilst on my way to collect him, I was involved in a car accident, due to a young male driver coming from the other direction from me, trying to overtake the car in front of him. He overtook too soon, and his wing mirror hit mine, resulting in my driver window exploding and shattering all over me whilst driving. I was incredibly lucky, just a couple of inches further over, and I wouldn’t be here today. To top it off, he was particularly aggressive, which resulted in me having to call the police. Jonny god love him, came to rescue me, and I’ve never been so glad to see him!!
Fast forward to last week, and Callum had been rebooked into Paeds clinic to be reviewed and checked over, and to have a chest xray as the Paed Consultant in A&E had been sufficiently concerned that his ongoing chest infection could be masking something far nastier. We didn’t even want to consider this as a possible option, and tried to force it away from our minds until such a time that we needed to cross that bridge.
In the days leading up to the appointment I got increasingly more anxious, and barely slept. Our baby boy goes through so much already, it quite simply wouldn’t be fair if something far nastier was going on in the background.
Put simply, I was bloody terrified of this appointment!
The consultant in clinic is also Callum’s dermatologist and allergies consultant, so he knows Callum really well as he’s been treating him for over 2 years. That helped!
He gave Callum a thorough check-up, and believed that the infection showed signs of having cleared up, but also felt it prudent to do the chest xray to rule anything else out. Unfortunately they weren’t able to xray at the time of clinic as the radiographer wasn’t in that day. So, Callum was booked in for 2 days later (last Friday).
I also quizzed the consultant on issues that hadn’t been resolved in terms of the allergies and eczema, and Callum is now booked into clinic for 2 months time, and for repeat allergy tests and food challenges to be done.
I’ll worry about them closer to the time, I really can’t cope with any more stress at the moment!
The 2 days to Friday absolutely dragged, I really had no sleep again, and Callum was suffering with another eczema flare up, so he was uncomfortable, grouchy and very sore.
My poor boy, his suffering never ends!
We made it to the day of the x-ray, and after convincing Callum that it was important to get a picture done of his chest to check his special medicine had worked, we got to have a look at the x-ray. The radiographer suggested that there didn’t appear to be anything nasty there, although she did raise a concern that it seemed as if the infection was still presenting in places.
I was then told that the images would be sent to the hospital for review, and the consultant would be in contact in due course.
Well, I wasn’t prepared to wait that long, for 2 reasons! One, if Callum was harbouring the infection still, there was absolutely no way I’d be waiting until the Tuesday (due to it being Bank Holiday weekend) to find out if he was going to start plummeting again. Two, I needed to know for definite for my own peace of mind that there most definitely wasn’t anything nasty lurking.
I went straight round to the GPs, and requested Callum got seen the same day. I got lucky, he was squeezed in for late afternoon.
I duly went home, collected Chloe from school, and traipsed back to the GPs. The doctor we saw was beyond fab!! She understood my concerns immediately, and decided to phone the hospital directly, while I was in the room, so a Paed Consultant could review the images there and then.
I am pleased to report that there doesn’t appear to be anything nasty at all, and no infection!
As soon as I heard, I pretty much burst into tears, the relief was unreal!
But, there was another issue. They saw that the bronchial wall is thickened, which does confirm that Callum is asthmatic.
So, he now has more steroids to add to his ever increasing collection, in the form of inhalers.
I’ll take that though, most definitely! Over the option that we were having to face, this is a walk in the park in comparison.
I am now pleading for no more! Enough is enough, this mummy’s nerves are frazzled!