breathless

Poor love had croup and an anaphylactic reaction in the school holidays.  Not much fun at all.  He accidentally ate big brother's weetbix which had cows milk on it.  We discovered that he's still extremely allergic to milk.  I had been secretly hoping that he might have outgrown it a bit now that he's almost eight.

He started off with a funny feeling mouth, then feeling sick, next a sore tummy and a strange feeling in his chest.  A few minutes later I noticed his face beginning to swell and we talked about the fact that if he became wheezy or began coughing, that we'd need to use the epipen.  Sure enough that was what happened next.  I got NanaD to call an ambulance and took R into our bedroom and laid him down.

Together we gripped the epipen and (after I got him to relax) jabbed it into his thigh.  Then I held him as we both cried (him loudly, me silently) and I told him how brave he was and how proud I was of him.  It's the first time I've done the epipen myself, except for the one I jabbed into the mattress while visiting the immunologist at Starship!  It was his first time doing it too.  B and I realised that after the terrifying reaction at Christmas time that he needs to learn to do it himself.  There will come a day when he'll be off with friends and will need to be able to look after himself. 

Once the adrenaline was working he felt so much better.  Still a bit scary when the ambulance guys rock up with a defibrillator and a special resuscitation guy!  Though the whole situation was so much calmer than what happened last summer.  This time the symptoms came on one after another and I knew what was needed.  Last time it was awful and we were confused and far from help.

We were even lucky enough to get a visit from the Clown Doctors while we were at Starship.  They were lovely and made us both laugh and laugh.  They're playing at being dinosaurs.

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