The Sick House

Last Friday I got a phone call from school, to say Noah was miserable and to come and pick him up. When I got there he was yelling away and not happy at all. He has been the same since then and hasn't been to school at all this week. It's so hard to tell with him what is the main problem, but it seems like he has a bit of a chest infection.

Lately the days for Noah has consisted of sleeping in till about lunch time. The great thing about having a PEG tube is that I can still give him his meds and feeds, even if he is asleep till lunch time.

He has been waking up for about half an hour, and having a cough and a cry and then going back to sleep on the lounge room floor. We have been using the suction machine flat out and Kobe just can't resist getting near it. It seems like anything he isn't supposed to touch at the moment, is the thing he wants to play with the most!

This morning at 5.30 am Jalen came into our bedroom and said he felt sick . Jay can often be quite dramatic, so I told him to have a drink and go back to bed. At 7 am he came running out crying, saying he was really sick. I gave him a bowl (just in case!) and told him to go and rest on the couch, as he wouldn't be going to school. He decided to put the bowl down on the floor in the middle of the room and then sat on the couch. Just as I was starting to say 'keep the bowl near you Jay' he vomits all over the couch and himself!!!!!!!!!!

Aaron very quickly left for school, and left me with a huge mess to clean up and a very unhappy boy! It looked like a war zone this morning - with boys laying around everywhere.

It was a long day. Jay spent most of the day in my bed, watching DVDs. Every half an hour to an hour I would hear a big 'Muuuuuuum!'. I would go in and he would hand me a bowl full of more spew (sorry - not the nicest topic!). At one stage I was doing something and out comes Jay saying 'look Mum' as he showed me his arm covered in spew. I asked him what happened and he burts into tears saying 'I spewed and was going to bring it out to you and I dropped it!' (yes - on my bed and all over my floor!).

In the meantime I'm trying to deal with Noah coughing and crying and needing lots of suctioning. I rang our friend Marlo (a biological medicine therapist) and asked her if we could come to see her after I picked up Aaron from work. She said she had no patients then so we went out. I wasn't sure if her treatment would work very quickly on Jalen as he was really sick.

He sat and had a treatment on her machine (a MORA) and the whole time he looked so pale, and was shaking. He was saying he had no energy and felt like he was going to vomit the whole time. After his treatment he wanted to go and have a sleep in the van. He stayed out there while the rest of us had a treatment and when we went to leave he was sitting up and feeling so much better!! I was amazed.

He was talking (he had been quiet all day) and had most of the colour back in his face and said he was hungry! He literally hadn't eaten all day, but just had sips of water all day. I asked him what he wanted to eat and he says 'McDonalds!'. It probably isn't the best choice after feeling so bad all day, but I was just happy he wanted to eat, so I agreed he could have some nuggets and juice. He ate very slowly when he got home, and so far so good :) I can't believe that the treatment worked as far as it did. We will see how he feels in the morning before we decided about school. He loves school so much and hates missing it. I said to him today that he may not go to school again tomorrow and Harri burst into tears and said 'but I want to go to school!'. He was happy when I told him that he could still go - unless he was sick. He told me he was 'sick' when he saw Jalen got a drink of lemonade out of it, but made a quick recovery when he realised he couldn't go to school if he was sick.

Hopefully by next week everyone will be back at school, and things can get back to normal (if there is such a thing in our house!).