The MD & Me

So much to say, and so little time. Maybe I should start dictating these posts as typing it all out seems to take forever, and a lot of energy!

I don’t even know where to start… I guess with the fact that Nadia’s sensory, OCD, and general anxiety issues are so much worse since school started. Did I ever mention how Nadia constantly thinks her underwear is wet, even when it is completely dry? She goes to the bathroom very often and will sit and wipe and wipe and wipe. I mean like 30 minutes or more, crying that “it’s wet”. I have no idea how to convince a child it’s not wet, when clearly she/her body feels it is wet. I do think part of this is sensory, as now she is to the point where she won’t even wear underwear. But given it’s gotten worse since school started, there has to be an element of anxiety mixed in. Strangely enough though, her messy hands issue has changed in the past two days. She still wants a wet wipe with every meal/snack, but this morning when she ate a bagel she was extremely messy with it. Stuck almost one whole hand in her mouth and had cream cheese everywhere. Very uncharacteristic of her. We are still doing OT for sensory issues, but so far our visits are limited to 30 minutes of playing with shaving cream each week. I have no clue if it’s helping.

Refusing underwear is quite an issue though. How does one go anywhere when they will only wear dresses? And no underwear. Last Thursday she didn’t go to school for that reason. Her epic meltdown was just too much, couldn’t get her to get dressed, get off the potty, stop screaming and kicking… And now she is walking around with one hand holding herself, like kids do when they have to pee really badly. We checked her urine again, no UTI. My mother found an interesting article though… Sounds like exactly our issue, called phantom urinary incontinence, and strangely enough, the actual medical research was published by a good friend of my husband’s who he completed residency with. Eric, though, had never heard of this issue, perhaps because it’s extremely rare, and while Eric does see a lot of children, he is not primarily a pediatric urologist like his friend. So… the treatment… is apparently what we already are doing, go to the bathroom often, treat constipation, which she doesn’t even have… I guess this is a phase. Ugh.

A few weeks ago Nadia’s pediatrician referred us to a pediatric psychiatrist in Iowa City. Who knows when that appointment will be. I asked her doctor yesterday what we can do in the meantime, as this is completely disrupting our lives, not being able to leave the house, spending sometimes several hours a day trying to calm Nadia. They said they would push the referral through ASAP. Whatever that means. Clearly going back to school is causing her extreme stress, maybe on top of moving to a new house. And naturally as I mom I want to protect her, so my first instinct is, if school is too stressful to the point where we are considering medicating her, maybe she needs a break from school. I mean, it is only preschool. But doesn’t that just push the problem back in time? Whenever she would go back to school, wouldn’t we start the stress and separation anxiety all over again? Doesn’t she actually need to go to school to get over this stress of it being new? I’m so confused!

So on top of all that. As if that isn’t enough to deal with, as if I’m not still living in a pile of packed boxes… and rooms that need furniture… Yesterday I was tested for COVID. The girls and I woke up yesterday with sore throats and stuffy noses, and I also had a headache, diarrhea, and chest pain with deep breaths. I knew school would send them home, and their current policy is they need a doctor’s excuse before they can come back to school, so we headed to urgent care. Strep tests for all three of us was negative so they wanted to rule out COVID. Apparently this place’s policy current is to only test one family member and assume the rest of those in the household would have the same result. (Um, that doesn’t seem very precise, but okay!) So they picked me, as who wants to test a 4 or 5 year old… The crappy part, the results take 3-5 days during which time we have to isolate from everyone. I know they have tests as fast as 90 minutes, so what a waste of time… Anyway, we are home, again, for a few days until we get results. And God only knows what happens if it’s positive.