What's Up with Aiden??

Ok, so I've mentioned a couple times that Aiden's been sick a lot lately. In case you're wondering what in the heck has been up, we'll try to briefly tell you.

First, he has had a ton of colds over the last few months, but we're starting to wonder if he really is dealing with allergies. When he gets sick, it lasts for a long time, a few weeks or so; he's always been like that. Then he'll be well for a couple days before catching the next bug. We could put him on Zyrtec to see if that helps next time he gets sick, but we're hoping to try some other preventative measures first. A friend mentioned Zyrtec making her child, close in age to Aiden, very sleepy (as in he slept ALL DAY and night), and when we were in to see Aiden's dermatologist the other day, one of the doctors told me that for this age, Zyrtec is actually more often used to help with sleeping... I would rather not induce sleep with my toddler with medication. I would rather not use medication unless necessary anyway, so we'll go for all the other home remedies first and see how that works.

Then...Aiden up and got a minor infection that quickly turned major. He has such sensitive skin, and sometimes we forget that because we take such good care of it and it is almost always so soft. When he gets any type of rash (esp in the diaper area), it immediately turns into an infection. Normally, we can treat it and it goes away, just as immediately. But this last time, that didn't happen. It got worse each day. After calling the doctor, we were told to keep doing what we were doing and to add in another cream on top of the one we were using - and to call back in a week if it wasn't better. That was a Thursday, and we were in the office on Monday...because the rash had continued to worsen each day and had spread over his entire body. It had become a bacterial infection by that point. We were given two antibiotics (Aiden's first time taking any antibiotics) on top of an ointment to use on the rash. BUT...he still continued to get worse. Ryan and I were getting very worried. Another call to the doctor's office at the end of the week had them telling us to just give the medication more time to work. But it didn't seem to do that. The next week, we emailed the dermatologist (before we were seeing the regular doctor) with details of dates and recent pictures. He called in a different cream.

That seemed to do the trick. We saw improvement overnight and were really impressed. And relieved! He explained that the infection had also combined with his eczema had made the rash worse. We've been doing some more research on eczema and have read a number of interesting things. For one, an infection such as what Aiden had can very quickly get worse and spread over the entire body. (Hmmm...sounds familiar.) They are more prone to these infections because of how sensitive their skin is and how their body reacts to them. Also, children with eczema can get sick more often because their system is putting energy into dealing witht he skin issues. So, basically their immune system is weaker, leaving them more prone to getting things like...(dum, dum, dum)...colds. Or allergies. Or asthma (which has not been an issue, and we hope doesn't become one).

Aiden's dermatologist had us come in this week for a follow-up, and we're glad he did because after the rash cleared up...it came back. Not as bad as it had been, but we were worried that it was back at all. It happens that this time, the rash is just from his eczema flaring up - not the infection returning (whew!). But the eczema flare-up isn't disappearing as quickly, even with the cream, and it's very irritating to Aiden. The rash from before would wake him up often when he was sleeping, and just drove him crazy! He's had some similar problems with itching this time, too. But hopefully it will be under control again soon.

And THEN...he must have picked up some virus at the dermatologist. The clinic is inside Duke Hospital, so there are all sorts of things he could have been exposed to, even though we took our own toys and all (he still touches things in the waiting room and exam room...). He woke up the next day with a fever of 102, which later went to almost 103. No other symptoms other than throwing up first thing after his morning nursing and then lying around all day and snuggling with Mommy (Aiden is not typically a snuggler - he's too busy!). He was quite the Mama's boy, wanting to be held almost every minute he was awake, which was understandable. He ended up back in our bed last night, too, because he would scream if I tried to put him down to sleep. He just wanted to be next to me; he did sleep rather well in the bed and didn't wake as often as I expected him to (but that could have been the Motrin helping with that, of course). I wouldn't have minded too much if he had, though. We were worried about him getting dehydrated b/c he wouldn't eat or drink anything and only nursed a couple times. I hated seeing him so under the weather. He kept signing to me "hurt," but when I asked "where"...he would just sign "where." (He hasn't quite figured out that he's supposed to show me where!) That was a little heartbreaking - to know he was hurting somewhere but not where. Today he's doing better, though: no fever, playing some, eating and drinking a bit more. So, maybe it was just a 24/48 hour thing and not something worse.

I'll have to post a couple pictures I took yesterday while he was sick. He just looked too pitiful. I even broke some big rules and put some movies on, since all we were doing was sitting on the couch... I'm on the laptop right now, though, so I'll have to get on the other computer to upload the pics.

Maybe after this we can focus on being healthy for a little while? That would be nice! I'm not sure how Aiden feels about all of this, but I feel like we've been quarantined in the house for the last five or so weeks... A break would be nice. Our fingers are crossed!