I've shed more than a few tears over this kid, mostly in the last few weeks. He's amazing to me in many ways, but he is just struggling right now and it breaks my heart. He's been dealing with some health issues that are just scary and it's like pounding our heads against a wall to get answers. His extremities "tingle" or from what we can gather, they go numb. This has been going on for about 4 months, and has slowly gotten worse and worse. Of course moving and changing jobs and insurance and doctors has made this particularly difficult. After several blood, urine, and neurological tests, the doctors say he is perfectly healthy, other than he needs to take a multivitamin for a low Vitamin D level. The kid who already takes a multivitamin and is outside more and browner than any kid I know has low vitamin D. Weird. The neurologist attributed it to unidentified migraines. Meaning, he gets a migraine for no reason, that doesn't actually cause any headache, just numbness. Weird. She said to drink more water. While I am so grateful that he looks healthy otherwise, what are we supposed to do in the mean time?
So after thousands of dollars worth of testing we will be drinking more water and taking a multivitamin.
As we walked through the halls at Phoenix Children's Hospital upset with the "diagnosis" I thought, well I guess I will take it, because I do not want to be here again. Fearing for your child's health and future is scary. And the whole affordable care act fiasco. I get it now. Insurance no longer does what it used to do. It used to help cover most of the costs of healthcare through the premiums you pay. Now it just covers you like car or life insurance does, in case something really bad happens. It's frustrating and sad.
After our neuro appointment we headed to the dentist. That poor dentist. I'm not sure I can go back there. He was a super nice guy, but I was at the end of my rope and was just trying to hold it together when he told me Jake had two cavities that needed to be filled, two filings that needed to be replaced and a tooth that needed to be pulled. This after Jake had just had a cleaning and check up a few months ago before we left Idaho. I felt like there was one of those giant lit arrow signs above my head in neon pointing to the worst mother ever.
And if that weren't enough, he's had the hardest time adjusting to our new lives here in the desert. He has gone from part time Kinder which was about 2 and a half hours a day to full day first grade which is 8-4. I don't blame him. That's a hard transition and that's a long day for anyone, especially a six year old! His teacher is great and we've already sat down with her and gone over our worries with her. I feel like his ability to sit still has really gone down since this whole tingling has been going on. But she's doing the bad cop thing at the first of the year to whip the kids into shape, which I think Jake is taking as "you are the problem child". It's heartbreaking to see. Our days are defined as "green stamp" days or "yellow stamp" days. I've never seen him be self conscious before and I hate it. He's only 6. He is so cool and smart, there's no reason for that! Plus I think he's been getting bullied. Of course he never complains about ANY of this. He takes it in stride which makes me so proud. But being a mother and watching your children go through things that are tough is rough.
Chris gave the kids blessings and we have started on our vitamin regimen so here's hoping to an improvement overall. I just hope this kid knows he's loved and very special.
He lost his second tooth on the bottom! Eating another apple. Oh that boy and his apples :)
