My poor baby is sick. ?I can count on one hand the number of times the boy has been to the doctor due to illness. ?The answer would be 3 (including today). ?The boy never gets sick. ?Seriously. ?He has thrown up twice (neither time resulted in a doctor visit), taken to the emergency room for a scary high temperature, and had a super nasty cold/flu the spring after he came home. ?He’s had very minor colds along the way, but nothing that has remotely put him out of commission. ?I knew something had to be up when he asked to go see Dr. Hautala “to get the germs out of his throat.”
He’s had this yucky sounding cough for over 2 weeks now. ?For the longest time we went with the theory that it was just seasonal allergies. ?The pollen count is high and he’s had sniffles in the Spring in the past. ?We figured that it all just caught up with him at night resulting in the hacking cough in the morning.
Monday he woke up with a stuffy nose and last week the trusty husband mentioned something about the boy asking “what?” all of the time. ?On any given day the child could hear a pin drop on the other end of the house. ?He’s also not one to tune us out very much.
As the week went on I was having to repeat myself 3 and 4 times with each sentence. ?I would get progressively louder each time I called his name. ?Heck, I was even resorting to sign language again. ?It all came to a head yesterday morning when, from the bathroom, I called, “Oleg, what time is it?” ?No response. ?Louder, “Oleg, what time is it?” ?No response. ?Now really yelling, “OLEG, WHAT TIME IS IT?” ?It was only then did he come down to the bathroom. ?I asked him as he was standing 3 feet from me what time it was and he still couldn’t hear me. ?I screamed at him, “WHAAAT TIIIME IIIIS IIIT?” ?Oh, hold on let me check… runs to look at the clock. ?”8:45,” he yells back. ?”ok, thanks baby.” ?”8:45,” he yells again. ? “OOOH KAAAY,” I yell back.
The past week has been like living in an old folks home. ?The TV is really loud and we are constantly yelling at each other. ?I bit the bullet and called the doctor yesterday. ?Turns out the boy has a respiratory infection and the congestion with a combination of seasonal allergies is causing the pressure in his ears resulting in the hearing loss. ?The doc hooked us up with some medicine and all should be right with the world soon.
So what does this all have to do with being a post institutionalized child? ?I’m not sure if it does or not. ?What I do know is that the boy never complains when something is wrong. ?I attribute that to two years of not being allowed to complain about anything, or even when he did no one listened. ?It makes me wonder if those times when he’s super crabby if there isn’t something physically wrong with him. ?Of course he won’t even complain when he’s worried about something nor will he get out of the bed when he has a bad dream.
There is so much that is ingrained in our children from those institutional settings that we can’t even comprehend. ?The best I can do is be there for him and keep reminding him that it is ok to tell me when something is wrong. ?I won’t be mad and I can help fix it.
Have you ever heard that eating locally made honey is supposed to help with allergies? I’m not trying to give advice, but I really am curious if you have heard of that and if there is validity.
Liv,
We have heard of that and I will vouch that it does work. The trusty husband used to have allergies on par with mine and he eats peanut butter and honey toast every day for breakfast and hasn’t had an allergy issue in years. It might work for the boy, but we don’t know exactly what he is allergic to. It won’t, however, work for me since in addition to pollen I’m allergic to cats, dogs and dust. Bees can’t make honey from those.
Oh that just breaks my heart thinking of him afraid to say he is hurting or afraid to get out of bed.
[…] you will recall we did take the boy to the doctor in late April because of his significant hearing loss and continuing hacking cough. ?The doc said he had an upper respiratory infection and prescribed him antibiotics. ?This would […]