Just because there weren't enough ambiguous coughs, sneezes, and other respiratory sounds in my house last week, all 3 of the males in residence decided to come down with a full-blown summer cold within 36 hours of my completing last week's post. We briefly talked about starting Cayston again, since things were sounding decidedly not good for a day or two, but we decided to try to ride it out instead, and I think that was the right call. At least I felt like I had two canaries in the coal mine this time: if Lime and Papa Bear will still symptomatic, there was no reason to think that Lemon's symptoms were caused by anything more than the cold. And, knock on wood, that appears to have been the case. All three of the boys seem to be more or less back to normal again, and just in time, since I'm not sure how many more consecutive weeks of respiratory symptoms I can handle.
Fortunately for my nerves, summer seems to be on the way. Lemon finished 3-year old preschool this past week, and summer camp starts next week. I'm interested to see how he responds to the challenge of being in a new place, with new teachers and new kids. Today I realized that I had never heard back from the program leader at the camp that I'd contacted about doing enzymes and whatnot, so I sent a follow-up email, and within a few hours he called me and said, "So, you have some medical concerns?" I rattled off something about medication with every meal, and oh by the way he has a G-tube and if it falls out it's urgent but not emergent, etc etc. "Uh, OK. Do you have this written down somewhere?" Luckily, I still have the sheet I made for Lemon's preschool teachers. So, hopefully everything will be fine. One good thing is that Lemon actually can advocate for himself now. He knows that he needs to take his enzymes, and will speak up if he doesn't see them. He also knows about his G-tube, and will say something if he notices anything wrong with it ("if" being the operative word here).
Summer on the way means that summer travel is fast upon us. It's hard to believe that our big family trip to the beach is just a few weeks away. Our plan is still to leave the vest at home, and do manual chest PT while we're away. In preparation for this, Lemon and I have started "practicing" every day, meaning that I do one full round of manual PT with him around mid-day. He resisted a little at first, especially since we had to figure out what positions worked best (he's grown ever so slightly since we last did this regularly, about 1.5 years ago). But, I think we've got it now and although he does protest a bit (because he is 3 and therefore must protest everything), I think he actually kind of enjoys it since it is 20 minutes of my completely undivided attention.
