Doctor, NO!

I’m discovering it can been quite a roller-coaster being a mum, and when you throw in special needs you are letting yourself in for one wild ride! I’m being good and I have given myself a good talking to regarding the feelings of GUILT I often have but this week I hit a low.

Thinking about it the week did start on quite a high as we attended the Cabbage Patch Kid’s 30th Anniversary Party, but Ethan come home from nursery on Monday afternoon with a very high temperature. 

This is quite a common occurrence and I sometimes worry that too much Calpol is used in our house, but needs must. So I decided to keep him at home for the week. This translates into days on the sofa watching Ethan’s latest obsession, which at the moment is Mickey Mouse Clubhouse The Quest for the Crystal Mickey! 

When I’m on my own with Ethan our relationship can be very intense, when he is ill its ten times worse and he doesn’t let me out of his sight, so I really can’t move off of the sofa. Fantastic you may think, but pretty frustrating when there are chores you need to get on with and any movement will end up in a meltdown. So as you can imagine I wasn’t in the best of moods by Wednesday, and frustration turns into me feeling low. 

Ethan still had a very high temperature and by this point wasn’t eating and only drinking milk, on past experience this has meant that Ethan has had tonsillitis so I thought it best to book a doctors appointment to check him out. 

I do feel like we are always taking Ethan to the doctors, and I sometimes feel like we are wasting their time but the fact of the matter is my son is non-verbal and can’t tell me how he feels. I also believe that Ethan’s pain threshold isn’t, dare I say it, normal, and as we have ended up with two confirmed cases of tonsillitis, croup and an ear infection this past winter I feel its better to be safe than sorry. 

So the doctors appointment was booked for Wednesday afternoon and my dad was coming with me to help. Why do I need help? Unfortunately Ethan has a fear of doctors, it started on the first A&E trip and his first tonsillitis bout. Ethan is very sensory with his mouth and won’t let anyone near it, brushing teeth is a real issue because of this. This means that to look in his throat he has to be pinned down and his mouth forced open. I can’t do this to my baby and so can’t go on my own. Ethan is also too strong for me, he is like a mini Incredible Hulk, therefore a doctors appointment will always end up in a fight. 

There is one doctor in the surgery that has successfully looked in Ethan’s mouth without a fight but there were no appointments left for her, and even though I explained why we wanted to, even needed to see her they wouldn’t squeeze us in. 

So after waiting what for felt like an age for our appointment and having to keep Ethan entertained by walking him up and down the surgery with lots of ‘Ready, Steady, Go!’ being shouted it was our turn to see the doctor. 

As soon as we got in there Ethan knew what was going to happen and wouldn’t even let the doctor near him with the stethoscope so the battle started sooner than we were expecting. I have no idea how long we were in that room but lots of screaming and crying followed, and Ethan is getting so strong now that even my dad struggled to keep him still. 

It was terrible, emotionally draining and all I kept thinking was ‘Will we still be doing this when Ethan is 15!’ At the end of it all Ethan was fine, so we put him through all that for nothing. This of-course did nothing to lighten my mood, and by the time Darren came home on Wednesday night all I wanted to do was cry.

I’m pleased to say that yesterday Ethan was brighter so we escaped the house and went to the park in the morning. The sun also come out so we had some fun water play in the garden yesterday afternoon, this really helped lift my mood and I’m in much better spirits today.