Yesterday he vomited the whole day. I only managed to feed him 200mls of formula and most of that was vomited up. I was giving him rehydrate between feeds as well. Today we had lots of gagging and he looked terrible this morning. I was worried about his hydration levels.
So after seeing Tina (physio) I made an appointment to see Jason's paed. I was concerned that this may be a hospital admission. Because of the amount of vomiting we think he is just vomiting his medication. He really didn't look good.
I spent an hour and a half with the paed (unbelievable paed!). He examined Jason thoroughly and we went through his full history and all our concerns. As far as his illness is concerned he feels that we need to give the antibiotics a little longer but have upped the dose, we have added nebbing with bisolvent and saline and continue with Jason's nasal spray daily. The amount of mucous Jason has and the thickness is obviously causing a post nasal drip, blocking his airways and making him vomit. So the best thing to do is to get rid of the mucous as soon as possible. The best way is physio and suctioning and then secondly the medication and nebbing. The nebbing will thin the mucous out.
We also discussed Jason's history with gagging, vomiting, diarrhoea, nutrition and immune system. In order for Jason to thrive he needs to be able to tolerate the amount of formula his body needs. He needs at least minimum of 1000mls. Now the problem with his nutrition and tolerating his formula (i.e. without gagging and vomiting), Jason needs to be healthy and that is where the problem lies. Jason catches EVERYTHING, if there is a snotty nose, he will get bronchitis. So we are going to look into whether his immunoglobulin levels are ok - these are your body's antibodies found in the blood and bodily fluids that are used by the immune system to identify and neutralize foreign objects like bacteria and viruses. So in other words if Jason's system is lacking these antibodies he will be prone to catching infections. We are waiting on Austria to send us the report on the immune tests that they did to see whether this may be the case.
Now obviously all of this causes problems with eating too. Jason hasn't wanted to touch a thing orally for 5 days now. When he is sick, he is not interested in food. When he is sick we cannot go for therapy. We have had to cancel two speech therapy bookings, which is mean to be his first assessment.
It's a vicious cycle in order for Jason to grow and thrive he needs to be healthy. In order to be healthy he needs his nutrition but the sicknesses are stopping him from tolerating his formula (gagging and vomiting) and his sicknesses are stopping him from eating too. The less nutrition he gets as well, the less healthy he will be! Aargh!!
Anyway the plan is to get Jason healthy, to get the report from Austria, to see whether Jason will be ok with eye Q which is designed to assist with eye and brain function. Also to keep Jason on his daily nasal spray treating it like chronic to help avoid nasal problems.
I did the exercise to see how much this week has cost us in medical bills and 2 doctors visits, 2 pharmacy bills and 3 physio sessions has set us back R1,600.00. Also I haven't been able to go to work. This is what happens when Jason gets sick. He doesn't just get over it like other children, he has to go to physio and normally always 2 doctors visits.
The good news is by this afternoon after nebbing him with the bisolvent he was a totally different child. Obviously the physio helped as well. He was back to the old Jason playing with his piano, on his bicycle, talking to his granny on the phone and running around wild causing chaos so I think he may be on the mend. I really hope so!
It's been a tough week. Seeing Jason like this kills us, we only want what's best for our son. We are trying so hard to keep him healthy and to help him grow and thrive but we keep hitting brick walls. He just comes right and the next sickness happens. We just get over bronchitus and then BANG it hits again.
Two weeks before Austria he had salmonella, In Austria he got rotavirus, norovirus, an ear, nose and throat infection then bronchitus and now this. So it's been about 7 weeks with a sick child.
BUT I know that God is watching over us, he hears our prayers and he is with us every step of the way. Even though our prayers aren't answered right now, God has a divine plan and he will answer our prayers in HIS time not ours!