It's almost Allan Bunny's fifth birthday and things are getting exciting over here. A handful of loving family members have heeded my obsessively detailed gift suggestions already and the rewards are trickling in a day or two at a time. We've got coloring books (oh hellz yeah), markers (so very needed), water shoes, and ... a craft box subscription!!! Two of them!!!
We've only gotten the first one - Craft Box - so far. This one was dinosaur themed and featured 4 separate crafts and some coloring fun. As shown above, Allan is a dinosaur bunny for a while. I will say the attempted fossils-from-salt-dough did not pan out. It got too watery, so we mostly got the cool dinosaur skeletons covered in coffee speckled salt dough mush until they needed a bath. And I guess the clay brontosaur we made lost its head straight from the oven. But Allan seems pretty thrilled with the process. And the coloring pages and markers together with the costume... total hit.
We're waiting for Little Passports, which will be kind of like Epcott coming to us (without the substantial covid risk and general horror of having to fly to Florida).
While compiling the master birthday-gift-list, I also realized Allan needed any number of new items, including bathing suit and hat and pajamas. Aaand underwear just in time for her to refuse to ever EVER wear it (she has yet to proffer a coherent & plausible explanation for her sudden rejection of undergarments, but she's got plenty of determination to never wear them again).
Which is to say, we're still mostly at home most of the time, but: Packages after packages! Better than Christmas!
In honor of her upcoming fiveness, Allan now outright rejects naptime. This was a long time coming. We had mostly transitioned to "quiet time," which was infrequently quiet but at least was muffled by being in a room with four walls and a door. The advantage of this was: (1) I'd say a couple times a week she did actually wind down enough to take a nap on the days she needed it, (2) I got my own break time. Last week she was really really protesting so I asked if she wanted to have her quiet time in her nook instead. She was down with the idea. And since then we've had a variety of more or less successful and significantly shorter "quiet times" that usually take far longer to begin and which usually end with me hanging out upstairs with the bunny girl. Occasionally with various objects d'Allan being tossed down the stairs until I threaten to actually move naptime back to her room.
It's a shame this had to happen while we're still in lockdown, but at the rate we're going with this pandemic nonsense, I'm not sure I really could have justified making my 15 year old non-child still lay down in her room for a couple hours each afternoon (actually, no teenager probably woulda been easier if she had a computer and a cell phone). The transition had to be made at some point.
And at least it's happening while I'm occasionally getting out of the house again.
Yeah, no, nothing "fun" but all essential. Ok, parts of it are fun in a twisted sort of way, but we'll get to the semi-nudes and battered skin pics further. Hang tight!!
Resigning myself to the fact that this pandemic will not end before some other health shoe could drop, I've been reestablishing care networks in West Seattle. Got myself a primary care doctor a couple weeks back. Lucky her, walking into a new patient meeting with a seemingly healthy 37 year old and subsequently being handed a 3 page inventory of mystery symptoms and tests and outstanding diagnoses. Since the "establishment of care" visit is pretty specifically time limited, we breezed through A TON and she apologized a lot and told me to see an allergist and come back for a physical soon (or in a month and a half because she's booked solid with people wanting to get exams before the "second wave" covid-splosion). But not before taking a stab at my arm for some bloodwork. My CBC is so thoroughly checked, it could have a twitter page.
As always, I have exceptionally normal blood. Given I often feel like I'm a giant flame ball of itchy achy weirdness, it's always surprising to see absolutely no markers of inflammation in my bloodwork. But there we are. It's not all just in my head and yes, stress exacerbates every condition so... what's your point... but I do have ultrasounds of excess tissue and measurable allergic reactions and and mamometry results and the occasional MRI that shows I'm not totally nuts. Just my blood is a gaslighter.
I do probably have pretty-well-treated Hashimoto's based on a slightly elevated thyroid antibody and long history of long-treated hypothyroidism. So, hey, I'm not without a diagnosable autoimmune disorder. But, for the fourth time (under two very different test methodologies) I have no known anti-nuclear antibodies. That means means as far as my blood is concerned, I don't have any particularly recognizable autoimmune disorders. Nor do I have hepatitis, which turns out to have a ton of the vague symptoms I have.... so ... that.
But get thee to an allergist. Or, first, a dermatologist, because they also do allergy testing.
Waiting! Covid era makes waiting in waiting rooms that much more fun!!!! Every minute the medical professional is (inevitably very) late is another minute you might be inhaling your final death cocktail of respiratory droplets from some other patient or from the nice person at the check in desk who just removed their mask to take a swig of juice and then wipe the crap out of their nose!
At the very least, one more minute of ezcemaceous irritation from breathing into your mask and feeling your cheeks get all moist and warm... I get reactions when wearing a mask; I have to wear a mask to talk to somebody about having reactions to wearing a mask. It's a fun cycle.
Actually I wasn't there for that exactly. Oh no, I was there for way more fun:
PATCH TESTING!!!! So I've already had the allergy test where you get pricked with needles dipped in allergens to see what you immediately react to (grass! dust! weeds!). That's largely for hives and hay fever type stuff. This is the sister test for contact allergies: Skin freaking out after being touched by something. This set of allergens consists of a variety of fragrances and preservatives and metals and rubber that show up added to everything you ever put near your body. Since contact allergies take between hours and several days to manifest after exposure, this test is a bit more involved. I got to wear these little allergen pods taped to my back for 48 hours. Then the little allergen pods are removed and any reactions are noted. Largely "wow, your skin is really irritated by wearing a bunch of tape on it for two days and then ripping the tape off..." But also maybe some allergic reactions
It's fun because - just as it was with the allergy prick test - antihistamines mess up the accuracy of the test, so you have to stop taking them for a while. I like antihistamines. A lot. Without them, I get itchier and stuffier. Also I am way more prone to hives (which are a whole different weird itchy skin thing related to allergies! I try to diversify). And all the other usual allergic reactions are enhanced of course.
Anyways, check number one:
 |
| Mostly freckles, but that big square mole... not a mole |
That big really obvious mark is apparently something called CL+ME-Isothiazoinon. A/K/A MCI, A/K/A MI, A/K/A Grotan, A/K/A Kathon... it's like some ridiculous sci-fi comic book villain that causes victims to break out into red itchy patches. There's another likely positive on the other lower side. Dermatologist thinks fragrance. But when they were doing the check, my back was so bright red and irritated from the medical tape that she wasn't comfortable calling it just yet. I get to go back on Monday for the last check. After which I think she's implied I will be prescribed scary ass hair-on-your-chest steroids and all the antihistamines I can pop like candy. This is the promised land anyways. After prednisone (which is an oral steroid and thus far more known for systemic reactions), I'm not a fan of steroids, but give me a few more days of hives and random itching and I might change my mind here.
Not being on antihistamines after having triggered a reaction is ... less than fun. I am having all kinds of transient irritations all over my body. Oh also the pepcid I take for my reflux is also a histamine blocker so I'm not taking that either, but that never worked that well anyways.
There are so many pictures of the faint traces of strange skin reactions (never seems to capture well on camera) I could share about now, but I'll resist because somehow they always involve a lot of exposed skin and you've already got the gist.
It's a weird place, being an adult, where you realize that most of the semi-nude selfies you got on your phone are not for exhibitionism and sextatious flirtation, but to save up to dump on your medical professional in case your concerning symptom happens to be perfectly clear the day of the appointment.
At any rate, on we tromp and stomp. And occasionally ride brooms because we are - in fact - witch bunnies sometimes and you hear things in our house like "ok, Allan, I will sit on the broom if you sit on the toilet" fairly regularly.
Allan's also due for a check up soon, since she'll be five in two weeks (ACK) and I'm pretty sure she's on schedule for a new round of vaccinations. Hopefully we can get her to wear something on her butt before we head in. She also has a bit of a rashy thing going on on her tramp-stamp area, which hopefully won't end in a patch test because I don't see that going well for any one involved.
And in the meantime... bath time!! In bubbles that have to be vetted against some kind of endless Tome reference of names for whatever the heck I'm definitely allergic too! Or whatever we have in the bathroom. And yeah, I really mean a period where she stands in the tub and I sponge bathe her with a wet washcloth because that was what we came to after thirty minutes of negotiations. She's got Andrew's self-assured determination and my argumentativeness which all adds up to ... well I'm sure it won't always end with jailtime when she's a grownup. Probably!
Happy August Eve. Enjoy that last explosion of summer before the great unknown of autumn!
No comments:
Post a Comment