"She also does the crash and burn. We can be in to see one doctor one day and the next day see a different one and be admitted. That is how fast her body can crash. Any thoughts on how you deal with this?"
Cheryl,
Mainly catching Marissa at the VERY beginning is the difficult part. She is so used to being hospitalized that she will not tell us if she is feeling "a little down." She has ADHD, so she is pretty hyper and doesn't show that she is feeling a little sick. Her pain tolerance as far as ear infections seems incredible. If it means a doctors appointment, she will fib that she is doing well AND act the part.
She had a lot of allergy issues that weren't being treated that would cause a lot of her problems. Her doctors didn't want to treat her allergies because they were afraid of drying her out too much. But after she got a sinus infection that led to an ear infection that had her rushed to the hospital in the middle of the night because her mastoid (sp) bone got infected, and kept her in the hospital for 9 days, and then on IV antibiotics for 14 days, they decided to try.
She now takes Singulair, and we add a can of water to her feeds at night to help keep her from drying out. She has only had 2 sinus/ear infections since, and they were right at the beginning of taking Singulair, they could have actually been left over infections. She was only going off antibiotics for tops 2 weeks at a time. It's been a year since she started Singulair.
We started charting her peak flow scores 3 times a day, and we can now tell if she is even getting an ear infection that way! Any kind of respiratory illness makes her peak flow levels drop.
Other than that we are very careful about keeping her at a distance from people who have colds, etc. If one of us sick, we stay in our rooms. We don't handle any of her meds, etc.
Bleach and Lysol are our best friends.
Once a week (or more if there is sickness in the house) while she is in school I turn off the heat and open the doors and windows as long as it is above freezing outside. (Make the distinction there, above freezing. I don't want anyone fussing at me because they froze there pipes, lol. But I do open the windows and doors even if it is below freezing, I just don't eave them open for more than 2 hours). Believe it or not that will stop germs pretty quickly. Most of the time in our house we don't pass things to each other.
I hope some of these suggestions will be helpful to you.
Terry
