And here we go again...

You know what I find strange? Months will pass where we'll just breath and live and forget that our children have undiagnosed problems or uncertain futures. And then out of the blue, multiple problems will arrise, reminding us that we're not off the hook just yet. That we had a respite, but that was all. We can deal with one problem, but then we need time to forget about it before the next one comes up. Handling all these little mysteries all at once.... the unknowns, it's difficult. So not only do we now have to stress and worry about why Boeboe's function is declining, but in the last week, three things popped up with Monkeyman's health. All three could be nothing. All three could be something. All three most likely is nothing. But until we get the all-clear, you can't help but worry. We're parents, it's normal! Ai.

Firstly, last week he showed me the Beau lines (I blogged about it in the previous post). I don't like the look and sound of it. Maybe I'm over-reacting, but since we've been postponing his checkup with his cardiologist for 6 months now, I decided to take him now. That's happening on Monday.

Here's some pics, explaining why I find this nail-thing so puzzling.


This is very difficult to see. The Beau's lines on these fingers are
already almost grown out. It's right there on the tip of the finger,
just before the white. The 2 fingers on the right (his left) shows
it best.

 

These thumbs are the reason it irritated him so much that he bugged
me about it. Look at how it flakes off. Then that gets caught and
hurts. You can see how deep the grooves go. The darker bits are
trapped dirt, I'm guessing. Maybe dried blood. How could his
body have dealt with something so traumatic and intense, that
the nails stopped growing long enough to leave such deep
grooves, without me knowing??

 

His right foot. You can see the Beau's lines, and if you look
closely, you'll notice multiple ones on some of the nails.
I don't know what the brown parts and bits are. My guess is
that his nails stained from the red dirt that Pretoria (close
where we live) is famous for. He goes to school barefeet.
You can see it's also stained the toes themselves.
I did try to scrub it off a bit, but failed. I'll try
again with a little brush tomorrow, before we go to
the dr on Monday.

 

His left foot. You can see the multiple Beau's lines here more clearly.
Look at the 2nd and 4th toe. What's also bothering me, is that if you
look at the very top part of the big toes, just where the nail grows over
the toe, there's a red blotch/band/stripe underneath the nail, on
the nailbed itself. Apparently, this is a sign of disease
or illness as well.

 

Here you can see it better. The dirty/yellow/brown part is the
Beau's lines. The nail is so thin there, it flakes off, which I
think makes it more susceptible for trapped dirt, which is
why it's so very dirty. Well, I'm hoping it's dirt, and not a sign
of his liver or something! If you look closely, you can
see more than one white line, thus, multiple Beau's lines, in
that brown part. In short succession. Very intrigueing. The light
reflects brightly on his nails, but it's still possible to also
make out the red halfmoons of the nailbed itself, on the
other end of the nails.

So what was the second thing happening with Monkeyman this week? Well, we went to their new school to drop Mr N off for some event there. As we climbed into the car, Monkeyman kinda hesitated, before attempting to get in for a 2nd time. He made an angry/frustrated noise, so I asked him what's up. He said everything is blurry. Apparently, it's been like that for months/weeks. He can focus on an object clearly, but everything around it is blurry. Doesn't matter if it's near or far. I'm not sure if he describes it accurately, but those were his words. I've booked an appointment with an optometrist tomorrow for him. Our usual optometrist could only see him in December, but a friend urged me not to wait too long with such a thing. Especially as it seems that his vision was still fine when the school nurse came around and tested the grade R's eyes in May/June of this year.

(Edited: I took him to the optom this morning before publishing the post. Optom says he has absolutely perfect vision. The problem is that his eyes are extremely dry, and that causes the bluriness. The cause of the dryness are almost certainly from his reflux medication, which was upped in June due to him aspirating his stomach acid. So we can't lower the meds dossage, thus we need to treat the dryness. He got an ointment I have to put in his eyes every day. We'll see how it goes. I'm so relieved it's nothing more serious!!)

The third thing was that about a month or so ago, I took the kids to the dentist. Shortly thereafter, his first two adult teeth appeared. The top ones, not the bottom ones as it was supposed to. A while after that, the bottom two came out. Now, there's 2 things that worries me a bit. The one top tooth is coming out at a crooked angle, though I know that other future adult teeth can still straighten this out in time. The other thing, is that the bottom teeth are coming out towards the back and also at a bit of an angle, all the while the 2 baby teeth isn't even out yet. Not even loose much. :-( So he currently has 2 rows of teeth, so to speak. I guess I need to ask the dentist if this is a worry, or a wait-and-see thing.



My very handsome young man. Here you can see, at long last,
after loosing his teeth at age 2 already due to untreated reflux (and lost
implants twice over the years), his adult teeth has now finally
started to arrive. Out of sync, but who cares? He's soooo
happy to now be able to eat corn on the cob like other
people do. Straight from the cob!!



His bottom adult teeth has also appeared. But our worry is as
you can see here, the baby teeth is still there. And the adult
tooth on the left (his right) is coming out to the side of the
baby tooth, not directly underneath it, to push it out. (It's the white
dots directly behind the 2 bigger baby teeth right in the middle.)

Ontop of all of these worries, he woke up sick two nights ago. I kept him at home, and he had about 300ml of fluids and half a slice of toast for the whole day. But he's on the mend again, fortunately, so not a really bad bug. Just another worry, another thing that's putting stress on us. It's never nice seeing any child ill, but one that you know have immunity problems, just make the stress doubly hard to handle at times.

Well, just to lighten up the post a bit. Here's a few more pics.



My beautiful daughter turned 11 last month. Her birthday wish?
Studs in the ears! I always said that it's their body, they decide
the if, when and where of putting holes in it. She was soooo
excited, and very proud. She felt so grown-up! She's looking
after it beautifully, so I'm glad she chose to wait until now.



Just a nice pic! We all decorated her cake together. She took
party packs to school, as well as to her art class after
school. And then we had a little family party at home.

 

Added this one specially for the hair!!
Boeboe's curled even more. I love it!

 

Isn't she the most gorgeous little girl ever?
Here, her hair was just washed. It lasts about an hour
or two, before we're back to the curls of the above pic, LOL.



She LOVES to pose for pics! Hahaha. So sweet.