Week 251: Pill poppers

Just to set the stage for the week's events, I remind you that about 10 days ago, Papa Bear came down with a case of summer pneumonia. He may or may not have caught the underlying bug from Lime, but that aspect of the situation is lost to history at this point. What is clear is that Papa Bear was diagnosed with pneumonia, got on antibiotics, and was feeling sufficiently well on Monday morning of last week that he left for 3 days at a conference in California. I'd felt less than great on Sunday afternoon, but attributed it to maybe overdoing it on a long run, and felt OK enough Monday morning when Papa Bear left. Then began a cycle of alternately feeling fine/feeling terrible. Although I didn't map the periodicity too closely, I did notice a sort of trend where I would take 600mg of ibuprofen, feel fine for 7.5 hours, and then feel awful. I also developed a cough of sorts. 

Anyhow, by Friday, Papa Bear was back, I was still feeling lousy at 8-hour intervals, and a doctor friend of mine wisely suggested that I take myself over to urgent care. I did that, and the urgent care people thought that since I was feeling awful, had a cough, and had a recent pneumonia exposure, they were willing to go straight to antibiotics, and I'm glad to report that I'm now feeling much better, even in the absence of ibuprofen. I did everything I could to minimize Lemon's exposure to the illness, but as I'm sure you can all appreciate, parenting single-handed with a productive cough is bound to result in someone getting exposed to something. And sure enough, Lemon has it now, too. We started him on Cayston at the same time as I started my antibiotics, and although he's still coughing a lot it's clear that things are going in the right direction. 

Have I mentioned that it is June?

In other news, we got the first batch of lab results back from Lemon's check-up last week, and they look really good, pretty much everything within or near the normal range. His liver enzymes are up a smidge from last time, possibly because he's grown so much that he outgrew his ursodiol dose, so we've increased that again and will follow up with the GI doctor in the fall.

Our other big adventure this week has been the start of teaching Lemon to swallow pills. He was skeptical (of course), but I do really feel like it will make his time in kindergarten so much easier if he and his teacher aren't messing around with apple sauce at every meal. We started with this video, recommended by our dietitian: 

So far, we have been practicing first with just plain water, and then trying to swallow TicTacs. The first two times we tried the TicTacs, Lemon didn't swallow them and spat them out. But, then, tonight, miracle of miracles, he swallowed one. He couldn't believe it himself. Of course, swallowing one TicTac is far from being able to swallow 3 pills, each larger than a TicTac, before every meal, but it is a start, and honestly more progress that I would have expected us to make in just 3 days, given how Lemon is about, you know, putting things in his mouth and swallowing them. 

Tomorrow I have my orientation meeting with our summer camp, which should be exciting. I somehow suspect they may have some questions about the medical form I filled out for them...