Who doesn't love a little Monday morning snowstorm in mid-November? As an added reminder that winter is upon us, Lime has his first serious cold of the year. He has a cough that reminds one of a wounded seal, and alternates between thinking that it is hilarious that he "sounds like an alien" and being full of woe and self-pity. I am in fact writing this post from his bed, as the latter two sentiments appear to be preventing him from falling asleep. So far (fingers crossed) Lemon seems unaffected and is sustaining his winter baseline of a few coughs and frequent throat clearing.
Of course, when our nanny showed up today, she had a bit of a cold, too. At one time in our lives, I probably would have sent her back home to avoid exposing Lemon, but a) see above re Lime, and b) given that Lemon spends every day in the disease incubator known as an elementary school, I can't get too worked up about him being around someone who has a cold but also understands basic hygiene.
In pharmacological news, some of you may have read that ranitidine (aka Zantac), a medication Lemon has been on for almost 6 years, has been recalled due to contamination with another chemical. We heard about this through the news, and our pharmacist gave Papa Bear a handout about it last time he picked up prescriptions. Who haven't we heard anything from? Our care team at the clinic, who ask me every single time I set foot in the building which medications Lemon is taking. I have a message pending with them to see if we should be switching to something else. Of course, we'd rather not mess with Lemon's digestion, which has been going along fairly well for the last couple of years. On the other hand, we'd rather not be giving him a contaminated medication, either.
Speaking of digestion, we may finally adjust Lemon's enzyme dose again. He has been doing a single 36,000 unit capsule with meals and snacks for ages, but at our last clinic visit our nurse-practitioner mentioned that he is big enough that two capsules is actually an appropriate dose for him. He's been mentioning stomach aches off and on over these past couple of weeks, and it occurred to us that maybe we really should be doing two capsules at least with larger meals. Lemon is very sensitive to pill burden, though, so we will have to sort of ease him into it gradually. He also does not like taking his 4 evening pills after dinner, so today we had a discussion about switching two of them (his vitamin and iron) to the morning. He was in favor of it so we will give it a try and see how it goes. I feel like there is so little he can have control over, it is important to honor his feelings in those few areas where we do have some wiggle room. His behavior has been a lot better of late and we'd like to do everything we can to keep it that way!
