She thinks there is hope

As promised, even though it is a bit delayed, here is an update on the Dermo Nurses first and second visit.

Visit One: She looks at his skin, and is happy that there is no longer a 'crispness' to the skin, it means that I am doing a good job on moisturising him often, but his skin is still red, angry and inflamed. She wants me to carry on using the antibiotic cream until her next visit. She is also sending a letter to my GP practise to prescibe a new bath additive(one with anti itch in it), a new shampoo, a new shower gel type emollient, a new stronger, higher sedative, anti histamine and a new cream. She also wants to change his cortizone cream for the body to the strongest one available, but we need to finish with the antibiotic one first.

Inbetween: Phone the GP practise 2 days later, they have not received the fax from the Dermo dept. Follow up with Dermo nurse who refaxes it. Go see GP practise the next day, first they tell me that it has not been received and then they find it. They ask me to collect the prescription later in the day. I fetch it at 5pm and take it to the pharmacy, who don't have everything, but order it in for Monday. The only prescribed him a 200ml bath oil and a 50g cream - they are both finished already and more has been ordered. Dumb Ass GP.

Visit two: Dermo nurse is not here long, she is happy with his skin. She does not think that we need the strongest cortizone cream anymore. In fact she tells me to stop using the antibiotic one and go onto our usual one once a day (we were on twice a day before antibiotic), and after 2 weeks his eczema should be clear. And to carry on with the rest of the products in the usual way.

Today: His sleep has gone back to topsy turvy. He has scabs all over his body from scratching, but his skin is not quite as red and angry. So I am not sure if we are starting a flare up or one is busy going away.

I must admit that I do think that the Dermo nurse is a bit loopy if she thinks that in 2 weeks his skin will be clear, but I am really hoping that she is right and I will have to eat my words.

She will be back a week from today. In the mean time she has asked me to keep a food diary so that we can see if there are any foods affecting him and if we should send him for an allergy test (yay!). I have not started this yet as I am going away on for the night on Friday night to meet some Internet Friends, some of which I have known for 3.5 years already, but have never met in person (I am very excited and nervous about this). But, due to this, I will start the food diary on Sunday as I get back Saturday night after James' bedtime. And yes, I could ask Gareth to do it while I am away, and yes, he is a loving and caring Dad, but lets face it, he is a man, so Sunday it is. And then I have to keep the diary for 6 weeks.

I did it!!!

And I have the medal to prove it. I did the Race for Life 10k this morning, and while I must admit I only ran over the start line and walked the rest of the way, I am still proud of myself and Gaelyn for completing it. And I had expected us to finish in 2 hours, so when we finished in 1 hour 47 minutes I was very happy.
And here is a dorky picture of me after I had finished.

(The dermo nurse is coming back tomorrow morning, after that I will update you on James' eczema journey)

More News to Follow.....

Good News - the Dermatology Nurse is expected to be here within the next hour

Bad News - the GP changed one of James' creams yesterday and he reacted to it, which means that it started burning him and he started screaming. Thats the third cream that has done this. He also has an antibiotic cream as some parts of his eczema are infected again.

*Most GP's only get an hours training on skin care, my GP however only works at the GP practise one day a week because the rest of the week she works at the skin clinic. She specialises in dermatology. The only reason she has referred us now is because she does not have the resources to teach me how to do the wet wraps at the GP practise.

Eczema here, Eczema there, Eczema Everywhere

Depending on how well you know me or my family or you know how severe James' eczema is. You will know how it rules our lives. How I only wear certain clothing at home as he needs to be creamed 5-6 times (sometimes more) a day and the creams are oily. How only getting 3 hours sleep is almost normal in this house because he is so itchy. How we can only wash his hair once a week because of the special bath additives that go into his bath. How he only wears 100% cotton. How his bedding is all anti allergy and 100% cotton. How we have visited the doctor almost every Monday since the beginning of the year. How we have 5 different creams, 1 anti-histamine, 1 bath additive and 1 special shampoo that need to be used on him on a regular basis. How we have used adult strength creams, sedatives and antibiotics on him to treat the eczema and they all failed too. And how we are really getting impatient waiting for the dermatologist to contact us, because after 2.5 years of battle we have finally been referred to him/her. Here are 2 photo's of his eczema, so you know that I am not exaggerating. I did alter the colour on the second photo a bit, just because he was moving and the camera never picked up the redness properly. This is just a slight indication because he does have it all over, including in his scalp and over his eyes.

But just to show you that none of this gets James down, here is a photo of him trying to hide in his Daddy's closet. He is a proper little trooper.

It's puzzling

I decided that I would try and make dinner early tonight so that we can all eat together (this has not happened for about the last week) so while I was in the kitchen making some pasta dish for tonight James decided to stay in the lounge. I left him with no TV and what I cam back to surprised. I was very impressed with my son. We have some puzzles that we leave on a shelf at his height, and normally he drives me mad with them because he pours all the pieces together and then I need to sort out the puzzles. There are about 5 puzzles and the smallest one has 20 pieces. They are all 3+ or 4+ (years not months. So when I walked into the lounge and I found this -

I was pleasantly surprised. My 2.5 year old son had done the fire truck 20 piece puzzle all by himself. There was no one here to help him. I am impressed.

So, we got a more difficult one. Its like a road map the next one, and I did give him some guidance, but he managed to do most of it by himself

Does this piece fit here?

Mmmm, where is that missing piece?

So now, while I have been blogging this James has started on the next puzzle, its a 4 year + puzzle with 24 quite small pieces, and he is already a third of the way through.

Lazy lunch?

I think this gives a whole new meaning to a Lazy lunch.....