Damn you

I could kick my computer right now. Just finished a postwas tuning it up and BOOM it was gone. Damn thing! I am finding the ever evolving world of technology hard to keep up with. Even now trying to imbed codes for links and such. I wonder if there are seminars for those who wish to just stay a bit afloat. I wish to share today a video from YouTube. It is a video done by the Food Allergy Initiative. The vidoe is from parent's perspectives and the first time I watched it I cried. It was truly amazing and it still rings so true to me and how I feel and what parents with children with food allergies go thru on a day-to-day basis.

Finding grace...

I used to look at life as kind of easy-breesy and didn't have many cares. I now have wayyyyyyyy too many cares. I care all too much to be honest. Why?

I don't have all the answers, all I have is hope and solutions. No I am not a professional - I am a Mother. A mother who would do anything for her son. I have never loved, pained, cried, and yearned to be a better person ever before in my life. But being a Mom changes everything. To find some peace in my semi crazy life I have sought help, am speaking to someone about my problems and in turn have found other things that I am hopeful for. I started a list of things I would like to do short term and then a longer list of things I want to do more bucket list-ish. It reminds me of the things that really make life worth the journey. The journey that I sometimes feel I have no control over BUT am once regaining. I am in charge of my life and for the life of my son. I will continue to advocate, fight, cry and learn for the both of us.

Today is Friday - a day I look forward to most of the week. It is the weekend and I get to spend it all with my boy! I think this weekend we'll go sledding and make homemade soup.

Cruz's skin is on the mend and I have the daycare now puting the evening primrose oil on. They had pasta day there today so I am excited to hear if he ate his rice pasta with red sauce, all of which I provided the daycare with. On top of Cruz's food allergies he is also the pickiest eater! It kind of makes me chuckle because all my life I've not liked mushrooms and now I have this wee one who won't even eat a single vegetable. lol.

Have a great weekend! Esme.

Sleep

People always used to say "enjoy your sleep while you can" well that has taken on new meaning to me and wow do I ever miss sleeping. It has been the most awful, sleep-deprived, stressful past few months of my life. My son as mentioned suffers from eczema, and I mean I used to see people with eczema had some girlfriends with it when I was a kid. BUT it was never what I had ever expected to see on the person that too me, is the most amazing, beautiful, blessing, smart, witty, charming, perfect son I gave birth to. It didn't just happen overnight either. It has progressed into this horrible monster that consumes our life and makes my son scratch his skin until it bleeds and he cries because he simply cannot soothe it. I'm not sure what the trigger was this time (I always seem to think there should be an answer for everything) but to date this has been the worst break out. I have Cruz on total food avoidance of all things he has tested positive to via rast testing and blood tested too. I wash his clothing in dye, perfume, chlorine free detergent and when his skin is super bad I wash it in just hot water and do a second rinse cycle on all his clothing. Everything he wears is cotton, 100%. I don't let him wear anything but. I vaccuum the house like a loon, change the sheets on our bed (he sleeps with me) every second or third day. I wash the floors with vinegar or sometimes bleach. I try and keep everything as natural as possible use baking soda. I use all natural beauty products. I find that Cruz even get's itchy from other people being over. Some are in touch with animals I am sure but I vaccuum after people come over too. It is really nice when someone just get's it. They come over in clean clothes and have made the extra effort to be clean as they know the state of Cruz and how easy he can have a flare up.

I was introduced to wet-wraps by a mother of a little boy with severe eczema who was a patient at National Jewish Health http://www.nationaljewish.org/programs/pediatric/atopic-dermatitis.aspx
this is the link to their eczema program. These wraps HELP, but thing is my son doesn't like me doing them all the time. I should be greatful he's bathing again. It is a struggle to get him into the tub and prior to now he would scream to get into the bathtub as the open wounds from his scrathing would burn and sting when he got into even the most tepid of baths. So we are bathing every two days just to get the dead skin off and to clean his body off from day-to-day stuff he encounters at daycare etc. I need to start wet-wrapping him again on the off days because we simply are not sleeping. Last night alone we were up four times. Twice I lubed him up, one other time I gave him what the doctors say will stop the scratching hydroxazine and the other time I had to rub his itchy skin till he fell back asleep. We snuggle most of the night which for me is crazy because I get neck and back spasms and kinks that alter my range of motion for days and weeks to come. I do get periods of sleep uninterrupted but I worry too about my son and his sleep. He is hard to wake in the morning and always sleeps at nap time at daycare. Then we go home and he is tired and isn't up for too much play. It worries me, as does everything that has to do with him.

He seems to be on the mend but he is extremely red everytime I pick him up from daycare, and when he wakes up in the morning. Not sure why...

I need to go buy more primrose oil for his skin as well as internally for him.

Epiphany

I have recently had a few or a lot of realizations which too, are an epiphany. One being that I have researched and scoured the internet for years about my son's allergies, eczema, and asthma for years to always turn up empty. Until a recent visit to Cruz's allergist where I seen one of my Obstetrician's from our home town. We travel 2 hours to see his allergist in Kelowna. There we met his family and his ever so knowledgable wife who is a Director with Anaphylaxis Canada. Their daughter now a teenager has suffered from allergies her whole life and was in the office doing a few challenges and of a few she had passed. They sat there and watched as my son clawed at his skin with his ever worsening eczema and remembered when their daughter had it as well. They were a wealth of information. And from then I have been making it my personal battle to find answers, solutions and overall peace with something he has that may go away but that may never go away.

The 3 I mention don't come with a label and tell you how to deal with them, it is more trial and error and we are still learning. I didn't know http://www.anaphylaxis.org/ existed before meeting the family in the allergists office. I didn't hear of the magazine publication http://www.allergicliving.com/. More importantly I had no idea I WASN'T ALONE.

I have always had a heavy heart BUT nothing had ever prepared me for what I had to deal with and how I was going to deal with my son's allergies, eczema and asthma. So I am going to talk about it here, and hopefully I can be of help to someone. I have a lot to share and have the tendancy to ramble and I know these blogs are somewhat neat, punctuated, and serious. Well this is serious, however I am not perfect...so there will be typo's and maybe a few foul words too. Love me or hate me - I don't mind.