Yesterday I don’t know what got into me, but I decided to take Simone to the park.
I know to some reading this, you may be thinking, “yeah, so? I take my kid to the park all the time!” Well, this child of mine has multiple life threatening food allergies.
We’ve taken her to places where kids hang out, and the result is always the same…some sort of bad allergic reaction just from touching things that other children touched after eating and NOT washing their hands.
The biggest culprit is peanut butter. Peanut butter residue does not come off easily. We can never take her to a McDonalds to go into the kid play area either.
Soy oil has the same affect on Simmi as peanuts, peanut oil and so on.
Anyway, I want to take her to the park more than once every year, and yesterday she was in her glory. She loved going on the slide over and over again. Then it happened, she started breaking out really bad. At first I thought to myself, wow, I found a place I can take her to each morning and she’ll have so much fun!
Then my optimism turned to doubt and fear as I watched her face and body start to break out. Within 45 minutes she had hives, was itching and scratching and finally I said, “are you ready to go home” and that little cutie pie picked up her things and started running for the car.
She was in pain. The poor little thing was scratching and ripping at her skin. She wants to go again to “special” (I told her we were going to a special place, so she just settled for special as the name) after her boo boo’s went away. I feel torn taking her to these places when I know the outcome is horrible for her. But I need to try too, because I can’t keep her in a bubble.
She usually needs to be holding something in her hands, today it was “raffie” and he accompanied Simmi on the slide over and over…till it hurt.
I’m glad we waited to allow her to go to school this year.
She is far too vulnerable since she can not say anything more than “boo boo” when she gets hurt.
Sometimes she can’t even tell us where the boo boo is.
That can be scary, especially if she were to eat something that could kill her.
All is well now, her rashes have subsided and she is once again ready for an adventure.
Last night Dom took her for a ride down the block to our neighbor’s house and Simmi got to ride a horse for the first time. I wish I was there to see it! Next time I’ll get pictures.
I feel like I’m on overload right now.
I know Dom feels the same way.
We have so many projects going on all at the same time, that sometimes it feels like I can’t catch my breath!
These are the projects going on right now:
- Dom’s in the middle of building the rabbitry (it looks kick ass!)
- The pond still needs to be finished- 50% complete
- The duck house needs to be constructed
- We’re exploring all our options for building our bio-dome greenhouse
- The utility kitchen is being painted and items for the kitchen are still being collected
- Dom brined 40lbs of cucumbers that will sit in a large pot for three weeks.
- Dining room is somewhere on our agenda to complete before the holidays
One more big project that is looming in the back of my mind, is a new website we’ll be unveiling next year sometime.
While Simone was playing and having fun yesterday, I was pondering how this new website would function.
I purchased the domain name yesterday, but it will be a while before we unveil it…just know its all about food!
We have animals to buy, more structures like the animal shelters and adobe bread ovens to build before we can even launch the site. It will be quite a unique website with instructions, video, recipes and going where we haven’t seen any foodie go before…we are super excited about it.
Don’t forget to breathe! Be careful not to get burned out! š
I’ll try Jen…its so hard though to just calm down sometimes. I mean, I always look calm on the outside, but my insides are freaking out and screaming. LOL We got a lot accomplished today. We got our counter tops, sink and marble pastry board. Oh and also a new book for Simmi. Dom took care of things here at home, so now I can feed Simmi, put her in for the night, and watch a couple of good movies tonight!
Thanks Heather. The condition your friend’s daughter had does have a name, it’s called Cold Uticaria. Simmi has that too. I took her to the allergist for her yearly check up to see if her allergies are getting worse or better, and by chance, he asked me is she has any other itching and scratching that was unidentifiable. And there was something! I explained to him that whenever she takes a bath or gets wet outside in a pool or playing at the water table, she breaks out in hives. He knew what that was, and put her on a medication for it. The medication is called Loratadine which is a non drowsy antihistimine. It doesn’t prevent hives, but it definitely slows down the affects.
Poor Simmie!! I had a friend whose daughter was allergic to water, no lie. She could drink it, but baths made her break out in hives, and the rain was even worse. She always carried a heavy duty rain coat in case of getting caught in rain showers. One day at school, in the middle of recess, it started to rain, so she ran toward the building to get her rain coat. The school had been informed about her allergy, and she explained it to the teacher on duty, but it was only a light sprinkle and the teacher apparently didn’t believe her and made her stay out in it. Of course she broke out in horrific hives and got sent home (they told her mom she had chicken pox–DUH!!!) and spent the rest of the day itching and in pain.
That little girl grew out of her allergy, and no one ever identified what exactly it was she was reacting to. But it must be SO hard not doing the things most families think of as normal with their children. You are amazing to do as much as you do and also have the energy to give Simmie such a great life.