Sunday, April 25, 2010

What's been going on?

WOW!  I haven't really posted anything since New Years.  It's time to change that.

Let's start with the hardest 7 days of my life so far.  Last Friday, I took Jacob to the doctor because he was coughing again.  He had bronchitis just a few weeks ago and he took some medicine and was feeling better, but while we were at the Dr.'s office for that cold...the doctor asked me if Jacob had been diagnosed with asthma. 

You see, we were taking the kids to another doctor and that doctor wouldn't listen to me.  I've been telling him for a long time that the kids weren't sleeping through the night and I was concerned, Jacob was very hyper and I was concerned.  However, until the preschool teacher sent me an email that I could take with me to the doctor his response to me was that they were just young and hadn't settled into their own sleep pattern yet, and Jacob was just a toddler being a toddler.  I don't know if I've posted it here before or not but Jacob is ADHD and he's now on a medication that makes a world of difference for him.  That's another thing that wasn't so important to the previous doctor.  The first medication worked really good for a little while and then all of a sudden, he started getting VERY emotional after the meds started to work out.  When we went to the new doctor he changed the medication immediately, it works like a charm and he's the same Jacob who is better able to control himself and his emotions are under control most of the time.

So... back to the asthma, last Friday, Jacob was diagnosed with asthma.  Here he is taking his breathing treatment in daddy's lap.  For 7 days he took two different breathing treatments.  One three times a day and the other twice a day.  That's a lot of time in the chair.  Thankfully, as of yesterday afternoon, he's down to one medication, once a day.

I have said before that I love the boys' preschool teachers.  I have to say it again here.  I got an email from Ms. Sally the other day and it said that she was working with Tyler on his letters and numbers and he kept asking her to hold them closer.  She told me that they were so close to his face and she was concerned. 

I had noticed him starting to do this but for some reason it just didn't click for me that he could need glasses.  So I called and got him an appointment Wednesday afternoon right after he got out of school. 

Tyler has astigmatism in both eyes and he's far sighted in both eyes as well.  One eye is 20/30 and the other is 20/40 and the eye doctor explained that the muscles in the eye can correct the vision in one eye but not the other because once the first eye focuses on the object it stops, it can't fix the vision for the second eye as well, so for right now he has ALMOST the highest prescription you can get on a pair of glasses.
So, I just wanna know, HOW STINKIN' CUTE IS THIS KID?!?  When we picked his glasses up today they had to adjust the frames to fit his face.  He is the one of my kids who is the funniest about the things that bother him and let me tell you.... they bothered him.  He was complaining about them hurting and the tech who adjusted assured us that the frames themselves were not hurting him.  He started crying and that's when daddy and I got upset and took him to the car. (She was finished adjusting the glasses.)  The tech told us that the glasses may give him a headache and that it could be straining his eyes a bit because they had already adjusted to what used to be "normal".

So, while I know that both boys will be perfectly fine and both the eye doctor and the pediatrician have told us that with proper treatment the asthma will probably go away and the far sightedness can be corrected by changing the prescription when it's needed and then he could have lasik when he's older.  But, getting this kind of news and being stressed at work and home and feeling like the crappiest mom ever because it took the preschool teacher telling me that Jacob was really having trouble and he was wheezing and it seemed a lot like her son when he's having an asthma attack and then telling me that maybe we should have Tyler's vision check before it occurred to me to do it, really made it a rough week.

Also,  my beautiful little girl made me cry when she said to me and her daddy, "I just wish I could take the things that are wrong with my brothers.  It's not fair that I'm the only one that doesn't have something wrong with them."  It's amazing to me how much kids understand and the depth of their feelings.

Sorry this post is so long, I just wanted to update anyone who cares to know how things are going.