Evie Update

The Breathing Treatment

/ Shane / 3 Comments

The hits just keep on coming for poor Evie.

We were taking Oliver for a follow up appointment for his ear infection, but you would have sworn the appointment was for Evie. She was hacking and coughing every few seconds the entire time we were there, while Oliver joked and played around. “Do you mind if I look at her?” asked the doctor. “No, no, she’s fine, just a cold,” we said. After a few minutes, the doctor asked again. “Well, it’s probably not necessary,” we responded. More uncontrollable hacking and coughing from Evie. Finally, the doctor just plain insisted.

She had Evie checked in and did an exam. After listening to her lungs, she decided she wanted to get Evie a nebulizer.

I’m not going to lie, this freaked me out. Growing up, my sister had pretty severe asthma, and she still deals with it to this day. I have strong memories of seeing her in the hospital, looking so small and pale, resting in an oxygen tent, unable to get enough air into her lungs. She was practically connected to her nebulizer, doing a breathing treatment several times a day, every day.

Asthma, allergies, and eczema are all related, and they’re all in my family in spades. There isn’t a one of us that doesn’t have one or more of these afflictions. Obviously I gifted my son with the eczema gene, so in my mind it seemed entirely likely that I gifted my daughter with asthma.

I remember my sister once did a school science fair project on asthma. In order to show what it felt like to have an asthma attack, you were supposed to breath through one of those little coffee-stirring straws for 30 seconds. This is something that has really suck with me for my entire life. 30 seconds is such a short amount of time, and yet the feeling of suffocation was absolutely terrifying. Ten seconds in and I felt like clawing at my throat. I imagined how many times my sister must have felt that desperate panic, and how she couldn’t just remove the straw and draw in a breath when she couldn’t take it anymore.

Not something I wished for my daughter.

Evie was a little worried about the breathing treatment, but that was partially our fault. I was caught up in my own thing, so it never occurred to me to actually explain what was going on until Evie, almost in tears, leaned over and asked in a small, quiet voice, “Is that going to turn my lungs black?” She thought we were making her smoke!

The doctor doesn’t think she has asthma, but she couldn’t rule it out either. However, her theory was that Evie’s airways were reacting to the fact that she has had 6 colds in 12 weeks, and her lungs just haven’t had time to recover in between. Certainly something was going on, because within 30 seconds of doing the nebulizer, Evie’s cough magically disappeared. They gave us an inhaler to take home, and we’ve used it pretty regularly. Again, this brought a lot of flash-backs to my sister, and in fact, Rachael used her inhaler in front of Evie to inspire her.

It seems like Evie’s lungs have now recovered, and she’s gone 30 seconds in between colds, which is a record for her. Hopefully this was a transitory thing, and not something she’ll have to deal with her entire life.

That poor girl just can’t catch a break!

Huh? What?

/ Shane / 5 Comments

Unfortunately, my daughter’s hearing is deteriorating rapidly.

If you’ve spoken to her in the last two weeks, you’ve probably noticed this. It would be really, really hard not to notice. If you are talking to her at a normal tone of voice, she usually can’t hear you well enough to even know you are speaking to her, much less does she actually understand what you are saying. This is absolutely not her fault, but it is very hard not to get frustrated with her. Then something happens to remind you that she is the victim in all of this, like when you say, “Evie! I told you three times to pick this up!” and she says, “Huh?” in such a way that you realize that she never heard you the three times you told her, and then you just feel bad all over again.

It’s not all bad, though, it has led to some funny misunderstandings.

Kid: “I went to a birthday party, and we jumped into a pit of foam.”
Evie, horrified: “A pit of bones??”

I got so used to speaking loudly around her, that I find myself talking loudly to everybody. Several times I found myself shouting to Sara when it was just the two of us alone in the kitchen.

I never really realized how isolating it is to not be able to hear, and how much you miss out on. Oftentimes when she doesn’t hear something, she just lets it go. I don’t know if it’s being a kid, being embarrassed about not hearing, something about her personality, or just the fact that you get tired of asking everybody to repeat everything all the time. I’m very thankful that she’s only in preschool, and thus is not really having instruction per say at school. I can clearly see how quickly one would fall behind academically.

Anyway, we could clearly see that she was experiencing some hearing loss, but we had her tested anyway. Her hearing showed normal to mild loss in one year, and mild to moderate loss in the other. It seems to have gotten a lot worse since then.

The doctors believe that it is temporary, and due to a large build up of fluid in her ears that doesn’t seem to drain, so they’ve recommended a third round of ear tubes (you can read about round 1 and round 2). The idea is that the fluid would be able to drain through the tubes, and her hearing would go back to normal. Long term, the hope is always that she will grow enough that her ears will begin to drain normally on their own, without requiring help. It hasn’t worked so far, but then again, third time was a charm with me and ear tubes when I was little.

So hopefully everything goes well and she will be able to re-join the conversation (side note, not being able to hear apparently doesn’t impede your ability to talk).

At least Ollie’s ears are okay, right? Wrong.

We always assumed that Ollie had no problems with his ears, because he had never had any ear infections. However, you only know your child has ear infections if he says he has ear infections, and if he happens to have the pain tolerance of a UFC fighter on PCP, then he probably just doesn’t mention it. Imagine our surprise, then, when he did finally complain about an ear ache, and the doctor found evidence of “chronic ear infections”.

Perhaps he inherited daddy’s ears after all, but just forgot to mention it.

The High Dive

/ Shane / 1 Comment

Evie has made amazing strides over the course of her first swim class. She went from refusing to put her face in the water, to being able to honest-to-goodness swim for a couple of feet. It seemed like every class there was noticeable,  significant improvement.

Finally, the big moment: the test to see who would pass on to the next class, and who would retake the class again. Evie was so proud to have passed, she burst through the door shouting as soon as we got home. And she deserved it, too. She worked so hard, doing something she really didn’t like. She really had come a long way.

Starting the second class was much easier than starting the first class. She was really excited this time, even though this class would be in the big pool instead of the little 2 1/2 foot pool where she could touch the bottom.

“Will we have to dive off the diving board?” she asked as we were getting ready in the locker room. “No honey, that’s for the big kids,” I replied. “Maybe by the end of the class, but not on the first day.” I assumed that going into the big pool would be enough of a change, and they’d probably do pretty much the same things that they did in the other class, just in deeper water.

Boy was I wrong!

No sooner had the kids lined up, then they were lead over to the diving board. The kids took turns diving in, plunging completely underwater in the deep end where they couldn’t touch, and then swimming to the side of the pool. The difference between the first class and the second class was like the difference between riding a tricycle and riding a motor cycle. It was taking something that was sorta fun / sorta educational and turning it into something that was 100% pure torture.

As each kid went down the line and it got closer and closer to Evie’s turn, she got more and more nervous. Her face turned into a mask of fear, baring her gritted teeth, eyes watering. Her whole body started to shake, and she compulsively kneaded and pulled at her swim cap. Bravely she climbed the ladder, but when she got to the end of the board she burst into tears. Even though the glass I could see her mouthing, “I can’t do it! I can’t do it!”

It was one of the most difficult things I’ve had to watch as a parent. I wanted to burst into the pool and sweep her up in my arms.

Five times they had to jump into the pool. I was repeating, “You can do it! You can do it!” until Sara tapped me on the arm and said, “You don’t actually have to say it out loud, you know.” My heart just went out to her. Even after all these years, I remember very clearly being in the exact same circumstance in my own swimming class as a kid, and being completely terrified.

She did it though, all six times. And the last time she did it without holding on to anybody’s hand (even if she did almost brain herself on the edge of the pool, because she lost her nerve and more fell off the edge then actually jumped).

Afterwards, I’m not sure if I was more proud of her, or if she was more proud of herself. Doing something that you’re absolutely terrified of feels pretty good afterwards, even if it feels pretty awful at the time. I’m just not sure what next week is going to bring. I think as the day gets closer, so will the creeping dread, until I’d imagine we’ll have to drag her there, crying. Hopefully after a few weeks she’ll be through it, and enjoy swimming the rest of her life. That’s what I keep telling myself at least.

I said to Sara, “This is why you take swim lessons: so someone else can do this to her. There’s no way I could bring myself to force her to jump.”

Evie’s new shoes

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Sara was teaching Evie how to tie shoes. “If you practice, you can probably learn how to tie shoes in a week or so.” It took Evie all of two days to master it. After demonstrating her mastery by tying every set of shoelaces in the entire house, we gave her the okay to get some tie shoes. She needed a new pair anyway.

The first pair of shoes we ordered arrived with Velcro, rather than ties. It turns out they didn’t offer tie shoes in Evie’s size. The second pair were ties, but Evie didn’t like them. She had a lot of trouble tying them (it turns out her laces were shorter than the adult shoes she had learned on), and they had a “bump” in them (otherwise known as “arch support”). It was clear she didn’t like them, and I didn’t feel like forcing her every morning, so we returned them as well.

Finally, there was nothing for it but to take her to the shoe store and let her pick them out herself.

To the shoe store’s credit, they gave Evie the full star treatment, giving her popcorn to munch on as they shuttled back and forth with different shoes, putting them on her feet for approval. (Seriously, when’s the last time you went to a place that actually tried the shoes on your feet for you?) As each pair was carried out, it was summarily rejected.

“No, this one has a bump,” she declared imperiously, waving it way. “This one has two bumps.” “I had another princess and the pea last week,” the saleslady confided to Sara.

Finally, she settled on a pair, and they are the absolute last pair in the world I would have imagined she would pick. They look…orthopedic. Let’s just say, she’s not the first “Evelyn” to own shoes like this.

They’re not bad shoes I suppose, but then again you’ve never tried to pick out clothes for this girl. EVERYTHING has to be “beautiful”; multi-colored and covered in flowers and fake jewels. Anything that is one solid color is absolutely out, especially if that color is something as hideous as brown, black, white, or gray. In other words, this is a girl that has the same sense of style as Mimi from Drew Carey.

So what’s the deal with those shoes? I don’t know, but she loves them, and I guess that’s the only thing that matters. I will never figure that girl out.

It must be nice to wake up with that kind of energy

/ Shane / Leave a comment

The bedroom door slammed open like it was kicked, and light spilled across my face, blinding me. “The fairies were here last night, I think they ate my grape!” said a small voice. I squinted at the clock and tried to make sense of what was going on. It was 12:34 a.m.

“Tomorrow I’m going to try leaving them a pistachio,” babbled Evie conversationally. Was something the matter? Was she having a dream? Why did she sound so chipper?

“Evie, what are you doing?” I asked. She faltered a little bit. “Getting up. It’s time to get up. The light came on.”

It turns out that Oliver had been messing around with the ghost lights the day before, and had accidentally re-programmed them to come on at 12:34 a.m. Evie, accustomed to it being dark now when she wakes up, and trained so thoroughly by the ghost light system, never questioned for a minute that it wasn’t time to wake up. How is that possible though? I was so tired I couldn’t even remember where I was, and here she is bouncing out of bed and chattering away. Wouldn’t you just know internally that something didn’t seem right? It wasn’t like it was anywhere close to waking-up time.

By the time I got into the bedroom, Oliver was already climbing out of his crib, ready to join his sister. So I had to get them settled back into their cribs, assure them it was, in fact, NOT time to get up, and turn off the lights. And the irony? With no lights to wake them up in the morning, they slept all the way until 7! So they were obviously tired.

I don’t know. It must be nice to be young, and just spring out of your bed at any hour of the day, ready to take on the world. I swear I was never like that, even when I was 5.