December 2015

December is always a busy month for most people....holiday parties, Christmas shopping, spending time with family, etc. I decided to kick off the month by participating in Giving Tuesday. Giving Tuesday is a global day dedicated to giving back and to celebrate generosity. With the help of Facebook and Twitter, friends and family helped Team Nate the Great (www.teamnatethegreat.org) raise $665 to help fund research for pediatric brain tumors. What a wonderful way to begin the month!

Nate watching the movie

Ben at basketball

Before the craziness of the month began, we decided to go to the movies with some friends. Nate was going to see his first full length movie in the theater....The Good Dinosaur. He had seen some shorter films at Lego Discovery and LegoLand, but this was the first attempt at a longer movie. He did surprisingly well and I could only hope that the people around us didn't mind his commentary along the way. For those of you that know him personally, he's never short on words! Benjamin was also in the middle of hockey and basketball season and enjoying every minute of it.

Ben at hockey

Nate's not too sure about basketball

The second week of December kicked off a round of appointments. Nathan had a nutrition appointment in Waltham on the 8th to review his growth and current eating habits. She gave some good insight on what nutrition he's taking in and what's he lacking. The variety of what Nate eats is quite small and he has much difficulty trying new foods. As of December, he was eating a total of about 9 foods (blueberries, strawberries, grapes, eggs: hard boiled & scrambled, PB sandwiches, waffles, Ritz crackers, cereal, and chocolate ice cream). The long term goal is always to encourage him to try new foods, but at this point, if he keeps it on his plate, that's success! Baby steps. After the nutrition appointment, he had a follow-up appointment with the ENT. The expectation of the appointment was to hopefully be discharged from seeing her. Ahh...if things were only that easy! She looked in his ears and saw that one tube was still hanging on in his right ear (she had removed the one in the left ear back in June). Before she removed it, I mentioned to her that he had begun snoring again and that on the MRI report from November, the radiologist had noted that his adenoids were enlarged. (he had his adenoids removed in March 2014!!) She pulled up the pictures from his brain scan and low and behold, the adenoids were back and back with a vengeance. She said because of the amount of snoring and continued lack of sleep, she wanted to take them out. Again. This kid just can't catch a break. So, I took the first available appointment....December 31. Happy New Year to us! :)

The next day, Nate seemed to slow down a little bit and didn't seem himself. He began to vomit on Wednesday night and had a fever. A little piece of me always stresses out when he vomits because it's a sign that something is going on in his head. If there are no other symptoms, I can usually keep the anxiety at bay, but it's difficult to not go to dark places when your kid with head issues throws up. He seemed to perk up a little as Thursday went on and just had basic cold symptoms. He had just finished dinner and sat down on the living room floor with me to play. All of sudden, he looked at me and coughed once. I noticed something on his lip and swiped it with my hand. I looked at it in my hand and stood right up. It was a blood clot and it was the size of a grape. I had never seen anything like it in my life. I washed my hands and called the pediatrician's office; I ended up having to leave a message with the answering service. In the meantime, I tried calling both of my sisters as both of their husbands are in the medical field. The nurse's line called back within 2 minutes, before I could get anyone else on the line. She listened to what happened and decided it would be best for us to go to the ER. Part of me was concerned, but another part of me was calm because it was so strange that I didn't even know what to think of it! On my way there, I was able to talk to my brother in law and he seemed to think it wasn't anything major so that helped calm my nerves too. I arrived at the ER and was brought back within 15 minutes. Stephen arrived after bringing Ben to his parents. Not much happened at the ER; they did a basic exam and didn't see the need to do any further testing which I was happy about. The ER doctor consulted with our pediatrician's office and they both felt like it was a one time thing, as strange as it was. I did mention that he threw up the day before and thought he may have strep (he has thrown up every time he has had strep), but the doctor didn't seem to think it was necessary to do the test so he just let us go with the instructions to follow up with his pediatrician in the morning.

I called first thing Friday morning and he wanted to see him just to take a look. They did a strep test and it was positive (2nd time in a few weeks). Oh, mother's intuition! Ha! I was just glad to get him on medication. In the meantime, Benjamin started with the fever symptoms and I knew the strep had spread. Ugh! He ended up at the doctor's office on Saturday morning and ended up having strep too.  What a week! The following pictures sum of Nate's December.....

Ben & Nate at the doctor's office...good moods despite being sick.

I really just wanted the boys to be healthy in time to celebrate Benjamin's 6th birthday (the 22nd) and Christmas. We were supposed to celebrate Ben's birthday with Stephen's family on the 19th, but it ended up having to be postponed by a day because the stomach bug hit the boys. They needed a break! Luckily, Benjamin was still able to enjoy his big day and both of the boys enjoyed every minute of Christmas.

Happy birthday to Ben!

silly boys on Christmas morning

Once Christmas was over, it was time to prepare for Nate's surgery on the 31st. We drove to Boston that morning.

not happy to be back in Boston

He did very well during the surgery; the adenoids were huge, blocking 60-70% of his nasal passageway. They were just as big as when he had them out the first time. Crazy! He also had the start of another infection so she started him on another round of antibiotics. He had a little bit of a rough time in recovery as he woke up quickly, but then struggled to stay awake and become alert, which is always nerve wracking. We were finally given the thumbs up to leave and looked forward to leaving Boston behind for a while.

Happy to be home enjoying some ice cream!