Despite all the smiles, sparkling blue eyes and beautiful, bouncing, blonde hair, April had some challenges for both boys.
Benjamin was sick a good portion of the month. He had numerous eye infections of no known origin and weeks upon weeks of coughing & nasal congestion. After waiting two weeks for the coughing to end, we saw the doctor for a confirmed (via x-ray) sinus infection. We did the prescribed ten days of antibiotic, but it only minimally improved. 4 weeks later we had another x-ray reveal only a small lessening of the fully-impacted sinuses. Lovely! By this time, we also opted for an injection of antibiotic to kick-start the recovery. It really affected him short-term (he was far more tender than he ever is with shots), and he had a fever. However, the meds did their work. but, this all means he spent >6 weeks with infected sinuses.
After burning through far too much Vigamox treating all his eye infections, we luckily got in with a pediatric ophthalmologist to investigate a blocked tear duct. We had gone through all that with Jasper as an infant, but Benj never had the same problems. It seemed odd it would start being a problem now, but it just seemed like the likely area to investigate next. Dr. Busse thankfully had an opening (from a cancellation) the day after I called and we got in for the diagnosis: a narrowed tear duct. He prescribed Pataday (to reduce the swelling around the tear duct and improve drainage) daily to see if that would lessen the problems and frequency of eye infections. He also explained that what likely was happening with Benj was that his tears were not draining from his eyes, and he was likely rubbing his cheek/eye and transferring germs which live on our skin into his eyes which were causing the green goop – and that the green goop was infectious but not contagious. ahh! finally an explanation that made sense (and was spoken with confidence).
We know now that Benjamin has no allergies – no foods, no pollens, grasses, animal dander, etc. none. so what’s causing all his sinus infections are anatomy: likely small sinus draining holes. so he gets eye drops and nose sprays to try to keep the troubled areas less irritated. Things have improved. Now we hope and pray his head gets big enough to accommodate his sinuses.
Jasper had his own source of challenges – at school. For reasons that we honestly cannot fathom, one day in April Jasper went from nearly running into Mrs. Kelly’s class with nary even turning around to say goodbye to clinging to my leg, crying and begging me not to leave. I was so shocked I almost didn’t know how to handle it. Thankfully, Mrs. Kelly was nearby and intervened to distract Jasper and get him into the room and calmed down. But this was such a dramatic change that it shook me. I was in tears after I left him. Each day of school after that was hard for him. Some were worse – (once, when Mrs. Kelly wasn’t able to intervene and Benjamin snuck away and was heading out the front door to the parking lot which meant I had to turn my back on Jasper and run for Benjamin, which made Jasper completely fall apart … yeah, that was worse) but others were better. And he always calmed down and had fun at school once he was there. But his exuberance about going was gone. He was nervous (still positive but nervous) and we had to talk with overwhelmingly positive tones about being there. That was sad. We still cannot figure out what triggered this. Nothing changed at home. No new medicines. … Drew thinks he just became aware of his surroundings more and was more anxious. Whatever it was, it was hard on him … and on us.
