Where she could not read or watch tv at all for most of the past 3 months, she now has done both on a limited basis on several occasions. She reports an increase in headache, but the fact that she is choosing to do it and deal with the headache tells me either it is increasing less or she has increased her tolerance for the pain, or both.
She is back to full schedule, minus PE, at school, and her grades at the quarter check point were almost normal -- all A- and an A. This is a phenomenal improvement over where she was when she first returned 6 weeks ago (think 50s and no clue why she got wrong answers). She has to work much harder, but, that won't hurt her in the long run :-)
She has tried to swim and bike a bit, and is slowly adding that back in although it still makes her head hurt a lot and makes her dizzy. There is no time frame on her getting back to actual serious pursuit of any activities.
To say this has been difficult on her is an understatement. As the weeks stretch on and the headache remains to varying extents, she's struggled to keep a positive attitude at times. And, the strain on her sister is showing too, as Bim has been less patient and tolerant of Lim's limitations, and has expressed HER frustration at how everything has to revolve to a certain extent around Lim.
Lim had been looking forward to her 12th birthday on April 15th as kind of a demarcation between illness and a new start. Unfortunately, that didn't happen, as she rang in her birthday with the headache intact, a nice head cold, and what we thought was a stomach virus. She had to come home from school early, sick, on her own birthday. I tried to explain that we would all laugh about it someday, but she doesn't believe me.
After her birthday, the "stomach virus" stretched into a full week, and we went to Mayo. Now, normally I love Mayo, but in this case I came away a bit irked at how they handled Lim's situation. After the first week they suggested we put her on the BRAT diet, which is fine.. but now, in retrospect, I am bemused as to why they didn't consider other causations sooner. Her symptoms continued to worsen, and when I called back a few days later they suggested a trip to the ER.
Now, I am not someone who uses the ER as an extension of my health care provider. To me, an ER visit has to be, well, an EMERGENCY. I didn't think this rose to that level, so Lim suffered for several more days of abdominal pain/cramping and 15+ trips a day to the bathroom.
When I saw blood in her stool for a second time, I called Mayo AGAIN and we went AGAIN to see our doctor. She decided that we might want to do a CT scan and stool sample and some blood work, and again suggested we go to the ER to do all of those. I preferred to have it done through the regular system, so Lim had her blood drawn, I completed my degree in poopology by collecting stool samples, and we arrived at Mayo at 7am the next day for the scheduled CT. The doctor also started Lim on a course of Cipro.
We arrived only to discover that, contrary to what our regular doctor appeared to believe, Mayo does not DO scans with contrast on pediatric patients. So, back home we went to wait for our regular doctor to call (and apologize?) and tell us what to do.
The call finally came late morning (no apology) and we were told to just go to Wolfson's ER. I got the distinct sense that they were over the entire topic of Lim's stomach issue. We did go to the ER, where she received fluids after they discovered she was too dehydrated to draw blood from... and they performed an xray and some more blood work as well.
The ER doctor suggested we consider admitting her for observation and fluids, but agreed that if we felt like we were able to manage it at home, she would be better off at home. We agreed that we would head home and then, if symptoms continued, come back Monday to the ER and gain admittance to facilitate obtaining a CT scan. The ER doctor put her on Flagyl, another antibiotic that apparently is prescribed for stomach stuff.
Home we went, and I called Mayo to see if the blood work and/or poop sample testing had returned. The nurse AGAIN acted like I was a PITA for checking on the results, not all of which had come back yet.
Saturday dawned, and Lim continued with the symptoms. When a call came in from Mayo's trunk number I knew something was up, since no one calls from there on a Saturday. Sure enough, the on call doctor called to say the infectious diseasey people had called HIM to let him know Lim's samples came back positive for something called Clostridium Difficile (but his friends call him C-Diff).
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/c-difficile/DS00736
Guess I wasn't such a psycho PITA, huh. Suddenly, we had Mayo's attention, and the doctor's minions have called pretty much every day to check on Lim's progress. We've had to up her antibiotics (Flagyl is the first line of defense) as the drugs and the bugs were battling to a draw. I had to email the school and explain that, while Mayo poohpoohed my concerns, Lim had been wildly contagious for TWO FRIGGIN WEEKS and that the classrooms etc needed to be sanitized. EHS helpfully sent out an email blast to the entire middle school warning parents of the c-diff invasion, thankfully without naming names.
All in all, it's been a pretty crappy 2011 for Lim, and even I am starting to struggle to keep that sense of humor going...
...that's my why, what's yours?
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