1/15/09 Whew....

Whew!!!! That word would best describe how I feel now that we seem to all be on the road to recovery. Tyler brought home the Novovirus from school and it has wreaked habit on our household since Saturday. If you dont' know what the virus is, it causes massive diarreah and vomitting. Let's see, this is how it all played out.

Saturday night: I hear Tyler coughing through the monitor, sounded like he was gagging just a bit so I assumed he was getting a cold, he never cried or seemed distraught so I did not bother him.

Sunday morning: Ben and I wake up and are playing. It's now 8 a.m. and I haven't heard from Tyler, I go up to check up him and see that sometime in the night he had vomitted everywhere (poor guy slept in it :(). I wasn't aware of just how sick he was quite yet, just assumed something upset his tummy. We sat down to eat breakfast, Tyler wasn't interested in eating but did drink his milk so I had a hunch that he wasn't feeling well. Then suddenly he vomits everywhere. Ig et up to take off his clothes and clean him up and clean up the floor, once I get him out of the chair, i can hear him start to gag so I race him into the kitchen to the sink he begins spraying liquid everywhere.. we make it to the sink. I hear Ben running to the kitchen and shout, please stop, don't come in. I can just imagine him running in, slippin gon the vomit and cracking his head on the floor. he listedn, thank goodness. As i'm standing with Tyler at the sink, Ben is telling me Clifford is licking Tyler's puke on the floor. Yum! Ok so you get the point, Tyler definetly not doing well on Sunday...Sunday night rolls around and Tyler is able to drink a bit of fluids and hold it down so we are happy about that, everyone else seems fine. We decide I'd stay home with Tyler on Monday and send Ben to daycare.

Monday: Dad goes to work, drops Ben at daycare and Tyler and mom stay home. Tyler not interested in eating but holding down small bits of fluid at a time. Vomits if given too much at a time. Around 9 a.m. mom feels queezy... by 10;30 mom is in roug shape and asks Steve to come home from work. Steve gets home from work after lunch (not that there was any lunch at our house) and mom retreats to the bedroom for an afternoon of vomitting, diareeah, etc. dad cares for Tyler and picks up Ben from daycare. Nighttime rolls around.. tyler eats a few pretzels, yeah, Ben seems great and so is dad. Dad brings mom some crackers and finally a glass of water (hadn't been able to drink all day) and the boys are down for the night... 9:30 p.m. Steve comes in.. Ben puked everywehre, oh goodie.. I take Ben to the bathroom for massive clean up, Steve deals with bedding, Ben's crying wakes up Tyler (who is so wheepy from being ill and he wants mom). After cleaning up ben, mom rocks both ben and Tyler in rocking chair while dad finishes cleaning up bedding. Ben pukes in chair before we could get him the bucket.. round 3 pajamas.. actually we let him sit half dressed with bucket. I tell dad that he needs to vomit a good 6 times before we can even attempt to lay him down. I got about 3 out of him and we decided to get him in a bath to clean up. We had our bucket for those wonderful moments. Dad was able to calm Tyelr down and get him back to bed. I beg dad to wash his hands and do his best to not breath in the puke air.. how do you avoid it right. So Ben pukes another 2 times in the bath tub and twice as I got him out. We made a bed for ben beside my bed with his bucket and towels on hand. In total, Ben puked 10 times in two hours and hten for the remainder of the evening was dry heaving every 25 - 30 mins. POOOR KID! It was hard to see him go through it all. Hew as so tired he couldn't sit up and was so floppy when I tried to sit him up to get his little bits into the bucket..there wasn't much left in him but enoguh that i didnt' want him to swallow it as that's what he would choose to do had i left him. Sorry I know this is all gross but there is a reason for me writing thi sall down and you don't have to read it if it's grossing you out. Oh.. so let me got back a bit.. as soon as we got Ben in bed and resting.. I hear Steve in the bathroom, oh no, it got him too. I asked him to use the restroom downstairs so that we wouldn't wake up Tyler again so then I was playing "on/off" with the monitor all night. Cause the monitor would pick up Steve puking downstairs so I'd have to turn it off cause I didn't want it to wake Ben as he was getting so little rest anyway, but then I couldn't turn it off cause if Tyler woke up and needed somethign In eeded to know, so we played on off with the monitor. Between the on/off fun monitor game and helping Ben with his dry heaves, there wasn't much sleeping on mom's part which was tough after a day of vomitting/diarreah and no drink and food.

Tuesday: Ben somehow wakes up ready to watch a movie and snuggle at 6 a.m., WHAT!!! Ok so Ben and mom get up. we let dad rest after his night of vomitting. Tyler wakes up and his worse than he was the day before. I'm super worreid, he's very lethargic and whimpery and seems to be doing worse than Ben. Boys are competing for Mom's "love" and aren't so interested in sharing it. Both boys vomit up their juice aka breakfast which wasn't a lot but we go back to giving them a sip or two at a time. Everyone is tried and Tyler I am unable to console Tyler so mid mornign I take Tyler upstairs to rock him. Daycare runs tot he grocery store to get us popsicles, she was free since our kids weren't coming that morning. I am able to get Tyler to rest so I lay him down and go lay down myself. Steve and Ben hang out and then also both take a nap. Mom is thinking by evening everyone should be feeling better by evening. When Tyler wakes up from his nap, he is still not well, wants more and more milk but we are afraid of him vomitting and we can't get him to stop crying. We consider taking him to the hospital and contemplate incridbly negative consequences of that action (will explain later). I'm convinced I have to figure out a way to get him feeling better. Ben waks up and feels good and eats popsicles. oh, Ben somehow did not get the diarreah. By Tuesday night we are thinking that we are diong good, Tyler is coming around and playing, ate a few pretzels and a couple of bites of yogurt and Ben is happy.

Wednesday: Mom needs to go to work for 1/2 day and dad is home with kids.s ays no one will realy eat but everyone seems happy and is playing and holding down fluids. Mom gets Tyler up from nap and sees he had vomitted. So a quick assessment is done to determine what is cuasing the vomitting as he was the first to get sick and we all feel better so he should as well. this brings me back to why I wanted to get this all written down and have a timeline in place..


Your family may experience the flu and the hell it can bring but you can never fully understand what it's like to be TYler and get the flu and as his parent the amount of worry that goes into making the best decisions. Tyler has still not really eaten anything, not since Saturday. We assessed the cause of his vomitting yesterday and discovered it is all a sensory issue, i.e. he relates drinking and eating to vomitting so everything having to do with those things causes him to gag. i.e. if he sees his cup, he'll gag, if you then do not distract him and remove the cup, he'll vomit. Yesterday afternoon, I racked my brain for all of the training I've had to come up with some solutions, change the environment, get distractor (new baby einstein video) change the way he eats the food, change the way I give it to him, etc. Nothign was really working. called a friend, my guardian angel amy to see if she's experienced this with her son who also has food sensory issues but she hadn't. I had also attemptd to call Carrie. I try not to bother her but I'm so worried about Tyler's overall health. She calls me later that night and gave ma few new suggestions and helped to calm me down. Tyler's been through the stomach flue once before, when he was a year old and it was a nightmare then too. it took him 2 weeks to really start eating again. I wanted to document all of this and the timeline to help me in case this happens in the future.. so I know as a mom, that if my little guy goes numerous days without eating that I don't need to be so worried, that he'll pull out of it, he's just not a normal kid that does things in a normal way and it takes him longer to pair happiness with eating again. So both boys are at daycare today, Karen is wonderful and is going to implement all the strategies that Carrie gave us such as only giving one small piece of food at a time and nto having a plate or bowl in site, making it very very fun. we notice if he does gag an we remove the items that make him gag and quickly do a fun activity, then he doesn't vomit. overall we want him to not gag or vomit so he can remembver that eating is good adn won't make you sick and continue to do it more and more.

Hospitlization for Tyler would be a nightmare, he can't hold still so he'd have to be sedated, we are very limited on what we can put into his body as a result of his diet and of course in terms of immediate health concerns we'd do whatever we needed t do but we wouldn't want to introduce anything he hasn't had in a year because that could also make him sick plus we don't want to undo all of our hard work. If bvomitting causes such strong feeligns towards eating, imagine what a hospital, sedation, IV's and a feeding tube would do to him long term. Gosh.>I just don't want to have to do that. So everyone cross your fingers taht our littel guy will soon begin eating again so we don't have to worry anymore and thanks CARRIE... for all your help! She also has a collegue who is an expert with food issues so said to call back in a couple of days if we've not seem improvement.

Worry #2: Ben has not pooped since Saturday.. sigh.. he has the poop of steel. We got him prune juice and tried to give it tohim in apple juice but he won't drink it. We did manage to get him to drink benefiber for kid and earning jelly beans if he drank it. His belly hurts of course and he doesn't want to eat either although he hasn't gone without eating nearly as long as tyler and ben wants to eat, he's just so full that it hurts. so until we can get him eating a more balanced diet we are going to give him benefiber every day and keep working on rewards for eating whole grains and vegetables and mom will be looking for ways to sneak them in :)

Ok so that's us.. it's a grandma weekend, yeah... we can't wait for Grandma to come visit this weekend