Vaccinated!

Well, I’m sort of vaccinated. I received the first of my two Pfizer COVID shots last week. A sore arm for a few days, and maybe a little tired the second day, but really no big deal.

It’s another Monday, and Nadia is still home with me. We are still struggling with her not wanting to wear pants or underwear. I had her try a pair of underwear on this morning… Nope she took them off, said it makes her feel ‘wet’ with them on. We did have our first physical therapy appointment last week. The therapist put some sort of electrodes on her upper legs, hips, and bottom. She said it appears that Nadia is tensing almost all the time, meaning when she was just sitting on the exam table, appearing relaxed, she was tense as if she was pushing to pee or poop. I have no idea how that is possible… We were given a list of a few exercises to do several times a day and told to try to make her go to the bathroom every few hours. Nadia lately hates going to the bathroom, so that’s going as well as you can expect! We have another PT appointment this Friday.

I have another follow-up with our naturopath tonight at 11:15pm my time, as she is in Australia. We’ve been slowly increasing some doses, so now we are up to one Candex tablet three times a week to kill yeast. And Nadia is tolerating the first of three bottles of herbs the provider sent us which we can do twice a week as prescribed. Yesterday I gave Nadia a small dose of the second bottle of herbs, and I didn’t notice any reaction, so maybe we can increase that to the maintenance level soon as well. The herbs are for a variety of Nadia’s problems, one being to remove mold from her body. I will say that Nadia seems a lot better lately (sleeping awesome too) except for this lingering wet feeling. It’s odd to me that this still remains, as in January we were able to get her over that… but now it’s back. So frustrating.

Tonight I also plan to chat with the naturopath about Nora. I’m not sure if Nora technically has any issues we can work on, but I want to ask. Nora is so so so picky, only has a few foods she likes, and none of them are healthy. Often she just looks sick to me with very dark circles under eyes. It’s tough to get Nora into school, like I have to almost push her in, the teachers sometimes escorting her in the building. I mean she goes, unlike Nadia, but it’s not easy to get her there. She also cries/whines a lot, somedays on and off most of the day. She doesn’t sleep well, clings to me often like Nadia… I don’t know. Just makes me wonder. I am sending in a urine sample of Nora’s for the organic acid and mold mycotoxins tests. Just starting with those two to see if they show anything before we investigate any further. I figure it can’t hurt to see what is all going on in Nora’s body too as I assume both the girls have been exposed to similar things over the years.

Ah, somehow it’s afternoon already and I still haven’t showered!

28 days, 5 hours

In the past 28 days I’ve been away from both my children for a total of 5 hours. I had dinner with a friend one night, and took Nora to dance another… if that even counts as time away. I’m not complaining. I love my children, but I’m worn out. I need a break. I need me time. Or hell, just time to get a COVID vaccine as I can’t take Nadia with me!

Speaking of the COVID vaccine… You know how the Johnson and Johnson one was put on hold due to suspected blood clots? Well, a friend of mine shared that her husband’s friend’s wife died this week of a blood clot from the vaccine. First, that is tragic and awful. My heart hurts for her family, it truly does. And you can hate me for what I’m about to say, but so be it… There is one confirmed case of a blood clot killing someone due to the vaccine. One. Out of over 6.8 MILLION people who received the vaccine. I question if this woman really died due to the vaccine. What are the chances of this one person being the woman who knew my friend? And if the vaccine wasn’t the case of her death, spreading this information, without confirmation, is causing undo alarm, it is scaring people, for no reason.

Did you know that over a ten year period, the chances of a woman getting a blood clot from birth control pills is 1%, thats one out of every 100 women. Do we are all consider birth control pills safe? Well, yes, safe is relative, but if you compare odds of blood clots due to the pill vs. the vaccine, well, the vaccine comes out as way, way, way safer.

So my friend who shared this information with the rest of our group through a chat… The other friends in the chat immediate began bashing the vaccines, saying they aren’t safe, they weren’t tested, that we are all just test subjects, blah, blah, blah. I took myself out of the conversation. I can’t listen to people, with no medical background, bash medicine. Yes, we all are entitled to our own opinions, but opinions aren’t a thing when it comes to science and data. The data speaks for itself. Do your research. Ask questions. But don’t made wide-sweeping comments that simply aren’t true and can’t be backed up by science. Medicine is not fool-proof. Doctors do make mistakes. And yes, there are risks to everything. That will never change.

This is not the first time I’ve removed myself from conversations with this group of individuals. Keep in mind these are my closest friends in our current town. It’s so hard sometimes to be close with these women when their views clash so drastically sometimes with Eric’s world of medicine. One of the reasons why I have had only 5 hours away in a month is because Eric is very, very busy caring for his patients. He would do anything to help them, and yes, that means some sacrifices for our family. This is not an easy life. And often I struggle with seeing the positives of all his time away from the family.

I don’t have all the answers, do any of us? But I know this, science and data show the vaccines are saving lives, helping the world get back to a ‘normal’ where we can hug and touch and see friends again, go to school, eat out, etc. That is the world I want back. I will get the vaccine.

Hire Help?

My COVID test was negative. Thank God!

The girls still have stuffy noses, and… they both have dentist appointments tomorrow which we booked months and months ago. I guess they will go back to school on Monday and we’ll consider this week a wash.

Last night sucked. So bad I feel like maybe hiring help would help. Although I guess we wouldn’t have help overnight, but anything would be better than life now… Here’s how last night went…

8 pm – Both the girls went to sleep
1:13 am – Nora woke crying for me. Why? Who the hell knows. I was tried so of course crawled into bed with her, even though I know I shouldn’t.
2:11 am – Nadia woke crying, which obviously woke Nora too. Nora and I went into Nadia’s room… which led to Nadia wanting to pee and having a meltdown because ‘she felt wet.’ During the meltdown I took Nadia out of her own room, where Nora was still in bed, and Nora eventually fell asleep there.
3:37 am – Nadia and I were still awake and she wanted to pee again, so I took her into Nora’s room and bathroom. Another meltdown over feeling wet.
5:22 am – Finally got Nadia to calm down and sleep with me, in Nora’s bed.
6:07 am – Nora woke in Nadia’s bed and was freaked out, so came into her own room to find Nadia and I, which woke us up for the day.

I need more sleep. We all do. We weren’t sleeping great before school started, and obviously now with Nadia’s numerous daily meltdowns things are much worse. I can’t really depend on Eric, as he gets so little sleep as it is, plus he was on-call last night and awake several times on the phone with the hospital. I often feel like I physically need another body here, another set of hands to take one child while I deal with the other… I know, sounds awful that I can’t calm two kids at once, but the truth is, Nadia overwhelms me and often takes all my attention. Does hiring help sound ridiculous? No clue how much time I would need them here, but often Nadia is melting down just when I need to take Nora to school… I would feel a lot more comfortable and calm knowing someone was here to help.

Anxiety & COVID

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.

Overprotective?

I haven’t written much, if really at all, about COVID-19, other then to say we’re at home, bored and losing our minds. Which maybe is strange since it seems to be the center of life currently. Why I haven’t written…? I don’t know, maybe because my thoughts and feelings related to it are all over the place, and change from day to day… And, they are just my thoughts. I read random different news articles daily, from all different sources, but as far as research, no, I haven’t done any actual research from a medical perspective, meaning reading peer-reviewed journals. I surely could do this research, but honestly, I’ve had other things on my mind with Nadia’s sensory issues and moving soon. So below are some random thoughts currently floating around in my head, in no particular order…

I’m sick of being home, even though I know it’s the safest place currently, as I see infection rates are going back up quickly in certain states and areas.
I’ve always thought my roll as a stay-at-home-mom was ill-fitted to my personality. I still believe that. I find it incredibly difficult to entertain my children at home, day after day after day. Especially when it’s very hot or raining, which the weather has been quite often lately. I hate sticking iPad’s in their hands, but I’ve been guilty of that lately more times than I’d like to admit.
I fear for my own mental health, as I struggled with depression and anxiety before the pandemic, and obviously more so since the start of social distancing. I miss doing things other than directly related to parenting. I miss my friends. I miss eating out. I miss it all.
I fear for my children’s mental health as they have very much lacked social interaction since March. My girls both struggled with separation anxiety before March, in fact, it took us many months before either would walk happily into preschool without me. I feel like we took a million steps back now… How will I ever get them back into school without tons of screaming on their part? And maybe on mine too…
I fear for Eric’s mental health as I know he is exhausted at work. I fear he will bring germs home, as in clinic he will routinely see 40+ patients a day. He’s back to performing both emergency and elective surgeries, but thankfully they only operate electively on COVID-negative patients.
The title of this post, overprotective, refers to how I’m feeling as a parent currently. I would say the vast majority, maybe 90%, of my mom friends here in my current city are acting as though the pandemic is over, or never started. Several refuse to wear masks due to “their rights as Americans” their words, not mine. A few even think the pandemic is a complete hoax, made up to advance certain political agendas. I do believe the media tells us only what they want us to hear/know about COVID, but as the wife of a physician, I believe COVID is real, and dangerous for all ages.
We were invited to a child’s birthday party tomorrow at a local gymnastics club. We aren’t going, and I feel like the other moms think I’m completely over-reacting by not attending functions yet. They assure me the club is cleaning extra well… but I don’t know, I just don’t feel comfortable yet. I don’t feel like the pandemic is at the point where it’s under control. But will it ever be?
Speaking of… I fear for the fall and the start of school, which is really next month already I guess. My feelings are very torn. I’m scared for the kids to go back from a medical, safety perspective… and for all the teachers and staff too, a lot of which are older. But on the other hand, my girls needs friends other than each other, they need social interaction, they need to learn, experience life outside this house… I realized yesterday that Nora (5) still doesn’t recognize all her letters and numbers. I guess my fault, I should have been working on them with her all these months. But after the bad experience with preschool over zoom last spring, I decided to just let the girls play all these months. And what about all the parents who work full-time outside the home? I stay home, I could theoretically teach the girls… but… I realize not everyone is in that position. Eric wants to hire a private teacher to come to our home and teach the girls this year…

I have more to share, more on my mind… but I best go dream up some lunch for the girls who are getting rather moody…