“I want to scratch!” is the phrase that William has been using every day for a few months now. He loves to be massaged/scratched on his back. In the morning, in order to get him out of bed, i have to scratch on his back; and few more times before heading to school; and then few more times at night too. I’d count from 1 to 3; and often time he would ask “I want scratch so many times!”, which simply means he wants more.
Why do you want to scratch? – Because it hurts!
But it’s not really because he’s hurt, he just feels itchy.
We always apply lotion all over his face & body after shower; in the morning after washing his face, I’d put more lotion on the itchy areas but he still scratches here and there. Some day is better than the other days. Like today, the teacher said he was scratching all over his body so she took him to the nurse to put on some hydrocortisone cream.
William really has trouble with sleeping; he doesn’t fall asleep until 11:30 PM or so; some times he’s still awake at 1:30 AM!
By 10:00 PM, I’m too tired; felt asleep several times and woke up, still finding him to sit on the bed and play.
He wants the light to be on ALL the time; both lights: 1 over the bed and 1 on the night stand in the corner. I waited until he sleeps and then turn off the light in the corner. If he suddenly wakes up in the middle of the night and he sees the light is off, he’d cry and ask to turn it on.
Here’s William’s normal schedule: Wake up around 7:30 AM in the morning to go to school; school is over at 1:00 PM (or 12:00 PM for summer school) then I take him to the Children’s World preschool where he can have a short nap (teacher wakes him up around 3:00 PM), and he stay sthere until 5:30 or 6:00 PM when Tim comes to pick him up. Then he has ABA session at 5:30 PM – 7:15 PM every other day. We let him have dinner around 7:30 PM. A full day like this one would think he’d be too tired and can sleep early, but No!
He only can sleep early if he doesn’t take a nap at noon.
Another bad habit that we don’t like. He loves to bring the stuffs that he likes to put it all over the bed; and he doesn’t mind to lie on them! Lately it’s a pile of game cards (Uno, etc) that he stores in a big can. He takes this can with him every where we go: grandma’s house, park, etc.
Monday 1:00 PM, Tim texted me saying that William was scratching his eyes a lot and they were starting to swollen when he picked him up at school. He asked me to call and cancel Speech therapy. He also sent me a few pictures of William: he was crying and saying “it’s hurt!”.
1:00 PM
2:00 PM
6:00 PM
10:30 PM
So I called the doctor’s office, the receptionist said they already fully booked so they would not take more patients; and asked that I left my phone number and the doctor would call me back.
1:40 PM, doctor Yen Chi called me back, I told her William’s eyes are swollen and said it hurts; and that I was not sure if something bit him or it was allergies. “If it’s allergies then it’d be itchy, not hurt.” – Dr. replied. She said she had to see it to be sure and asked that we brought him in.
So I told Tim to take William to the doctor’s office as soon as possible, William was still crying at this time.
3:00 PM, Tim got him from the doctor; the doctor said it was allergies so she prescribed some medicine to drink and some eye drops.
5:30 PM, I picked up the medicine from the pharmacy, stopped by the bakery to buy some chocolate cake slices that I know William loves so much; There’s Phở’s Lovers near by so I brought 2 bowls to-go for our dinner.
6:30 PM, got home and William just got out of shower, he was lying on the bed and crying. Tim said he could not take a nap. We gave him 10 ml of Loratadine for allergy and some eye drops.
Then we had Phở for dinner and chocolate cake for dessert. Now his eyes seemed to stop bothering him: he began to laugh while watching the videos of Oddbods.
11:00 PM His eyes started to look better. We gave him more eye drops.
This morning, his eyes still not back to normal yet but it seemed that it doesn’t bother him anymore. I gave him another 10 ml of Loratadine and some eye drops.
I was expecting calls from school saying that he’s scratching eyes but no body called, which I was so glad.
Next day, in the morning, much better but still swollen a little bit.
Thursday. William still coughed a lot so we designated Tim to stay home and watched him. It’s Valentine’s day, and I already prepared all the little treats for his teachers and classmates so I took out the umbrella and headed to his school. It was raining hard so instead of waiting for the teachers to come out, I came to the office and fortunately Ms. Newman was there. So I gave her the Valentine’s treats; and filled out the absence card for school.
We also bought 1 box of cookies for the teachers at Children’s World Preschool.
The cookies box is for the teachers, the little bags are for classmates.Poor little baby, he looked so tired.
Later at night, it was 11 PM and he still could not sleep, so I asked if he wanted a cookie. He said yes and followed me to the kitchen. He grabbed the chocolate box that Tim bought for me on V-day and went back to bed. He picked 1 chocolate; I broke the chocolate in half to check if there’s peanuts; it looked like just toffee so I let him eat it. He ate 1 half and put his finger into his mouth; I though the sticky toffee stuck in his teeth so I took him to the bathroom to brush his teeth; then took him back to bed.
I went back to the bathroom to clean up and heard some noise coming from the bedroom; sounded like he was throwing up. Uh oh! I ran back to the bedroom and there he was, standing on the edge of the bed and threw up on the floor. He said, “It’s Peanuts”.
Definitely peanuts, otherwise he would not throw up that much.
I woke Tim up to help me change William and clean up the floor. Then we gave him 6ml of Loratadine and let him use the Nebulizer to make sure his airways are not clogged. I watched his breath and his stomach and luckily his breath was normal.
Wednesday morning, I took William to school as usual. Ms. Sandy heard him coughing so hard she suggested that I took him home.
I called in sick to take care of him. We also cancelled the ABA session in the afternoon. William did not eat any thing except asking for milk. I cooked chicken porridge but he refused to eat after 1 bite. I asked if he wanted Spaghetti, he said, “Yes” so I heated up his favorite spaghetti. While it was still heating up, he ran to the bed room and laid there and refused to go back to the dining table. I brought the spaghetti to the bed room but he did not want to eat that either. I could force him to have 2 bites but that’s about it. So I gave him a bottle of milk and 5 ml of Children DimeTapp.
He felt asleep around 12:00 PM but woke up around 2:30 PM.
He looked tired and refused to drink or eat anything. He must be very hungry but I guess he was tired and sick that did not want to eat.
Thursday morning, when I changed William’s clothes to get ready for school, I noticed some visible bumps on his thighs; I thought it was bed bugs so I changed the bed skirt, pillow cases and comforter. He was scratching his angle; but I thought it was just skin irritation.
Later in the evening when I gave him a shower, those bumps now turned to light red; and then later in the night, they were more visible and those red dots appeared on his palms and his feet too. And he started to scratch more; that was when I started to worry.
I checked his body again early morning, the red dots are still there; that was when I decided to take a day off work and take him to the doctor. That was Friday morning.
Called the doctor Huy’s office at 9:00 AM to make appointment, got a spot at 11:00 AM. As soon as I showed Dr. Huy the red spots, he said right away “It’s Hand Foot Mouth Disease” while checking William’s mouth. Everything is normal in his mouth.
“But he had this 2 years ago, I thought one can have this only once in lifetime!” – I was so surprised.
“It’s can be different virus” – Dr. Huy replied.
“It’s gonna be gone in a few days, no need to take any medicine, just keep him at home to rest. If he feels pain, you can give him Children Tylenol or Benadryl for his itch”. He also prescribed some itchy cream.
So that was it! William got to stay home for a few days; I called Lincoln school, Children World preschool, TasKids to let them know about William’s condition.
TasKids asked us to send the doctor’s note as to when he can be safely go back to school.
By Sunday, all the red dots starting to disappear; he didn’t have fever or blistering; I was so glad that this time it was mild.
Foot
Palms
Thighs
Belly
Foot
Taking blood pressure43 lbls at 5 years old, 3 feet high.William can return to school on Tuesday.
Wednesday night while we were eating dinner, William pointed to his lower right teeth and said “It hurts!”, and he did not enjoy eating too much. Later in the early morning around 1:00 AM his cries woke me; I kept asking him “Where does it hurt?” but he didn’t reply. So I asked “Is it nose or mouth?”. “Nose!”, he said.
So I thought he had trouble breathing, but I looked closely on his face, his throat and stomach, he did not seem to have breathing issues at all but I still took out the albuterol nebulizer but he pushed it away. I also gave him 5ml of Loratadine for his allergies.
He went back to sleep and woke up again crying around 2 AM, then again 3:40 AM!
I wish he could tell me what was hurting him but he did not so I was sitting there looking at him and trying to guess what was wrong. I recalled he said his teeth hurt while eating dinner so my best guess is that his teeth was hurting, not his nose like he said.
So I pulled out a list of dentist that our Service Co-ordinator Kim Than gave me last time we meet. Called the one that she recommended, Tustin Pediatric Dentistry, but they don’t accept Medi-cal. Then I googled it, found a few near me, and decided to try the South Coast Pediatric Dentistry which is ranked #5 in Yelp. It was 8:00 AM, I called several times but all I got was the machine so I left a voice message. Around 9:10 AM someone called me back, and we settled for 11:00 AM appointment.
It was raining so hard outside; in fact it had been raining for a few days already!
William was still in deep sleep so I let him, poor little guy he could not sleep much last night. I woke him up around 9:30 AM so that he could have some breakfast before heading to the dentist. I only told him that we were going shopping :).
Saturday 3:00 PM. William’s hairs getting long but he refused to let me cut it. So I have to wait until he sleeps and then try to cut his hairs. But it’s tough because he’s a light sleepy; he can tell when I touch his hair and would sit up and say “No cutting!”.
So today we had an appointment at 3 at Sharkey’s Cuts for Kids which specializes in cutting hairs for children.
He started to say No, No cutting when we arrived to the store; and refused to sit on the chair. So finally he ended up to sit on the small chair in the play area. One nice thing about this salon is that there’s no noise from the hair trimmers at all. They have 1 tivi at each station; they also have video games if the children choose to play instead of watching Tivi. Jessica, his hair stylist, kept asking if he wanted to watch different movie but he said no. (The train movie was playing because the kid came before William was watching it).
So finally his hair cut is done with me sitting next to him kept talking and asking him question and let him watch my phone to distract him.
I love his new look; we should have taken him to have a professional hair cut sooner.
The cost was $24.59 and I gave Jessica $5.00 tip. They accept credit cards.
Jessica was showing William the trimmer and assuring him that it’s not gonna hurt.
And his new look
After his haircut, we stopped by the market Spouts next door, he loved to run around inside the market.
Monday 11:30 AM. Got a call from the school nurse saying William was sitting in her office because his eyes were swollen. She asked I I gave him any medicine in the morning, I said No; She then asked if we ever used the EpiPen, I said “We never had to.”. Then she said she’d let William stayed in her office to watch and would update me if there’s any news.
After the conversation, it struck me that she mention EpiPen! it must be something worse that she was thinking about using EpiPen. Soon she called me back and told me that the teachers gave out peanut ice cream, even though William did not get it but some how it affected him so that must be why he was scratching his eyes a lot. And she asked that I picked him up. It was 11:50 PM.
I came to the school right away; William was in the nurse office with Ms. Newman. She said she threw away all the peanuts candies (Halloween is coming up, that was why she had candies) but some how William still got infected. He didn’t throw up so that tells me that he did not eat any; so probably he touched it or smelled it. He stopped scratching after the nurse gave him some Benadryl.
The nurse, Vanessa, said that she’s never seen any allergic case so she would not know if it happens right a way or after a period of time so she called Orange County office to find out. They told her allergic reactions would take place right away. I’m a little bit worried that the nurse is not very experienced so I’m a bit concern if she knows what to do and do things in the timely manner.
I took him home, made him a cheese sandwich, and gave him milk. I cancelled the Speech therapy session so that he could stay home and rest. After finish the milk, he felt asleep. I went back to work, leaving him for Tim to watch.
