Head and Shoulders, Knees and Toes

I actually have nothing to talk about when it comes to heads, shoulders, knees or even toes, but Ryan and I often sing that little song while we are waiting in doctor's offices. Well...I do have something to say about feet, but I'll get to that in a minute. I do have a couple of specific body parts I wish to discuss.

Today Ryan had his allergy testing. May I take a moment to applaud my little boy. He is the strongest little guy ever. As you will see in a minute Ryan was stuck MULTIPLE times today for the allergy test as well as blood draws. He NEVER cried once! He squeaked just a little when they were drawing his blood, but not once did he ever wail and cry. What a big boy he is!

That brings me to my first body part...the heart. Now, now, now don't get worried it has nothing to do with Ryan's heart. It's mine. Today my heart melted and broke. All in one day. Sounds exciting doesn't it? Well first, while we were waiting in the doctor's office we were discussing different things including our common discussion of "where's Ryan?"..."Oh!...there he is!" Today I asked "where's Mommy?" to which Ryan stuck his cute little pointer finger in the air and touched my chest and said "mom, mom". Oh be still my beating heart. You're melting I feel it!

My heart absolutely broke when Ryan had to get stuck TWICE for blood draws. The first stick he squirmed too much and his vein blew before any blood could be collected. The second time was a success (with an extra pair of hands for restraining). My heart broke more when I looked down at my little boy, not crying, but with huge crocodile tears and his bottom lip just quivering something terrible. Oh, my poor baby.

Here we are in the office:

reading books.

playing in-and-out and open-closed with cars and conveniently located drawers.

Body Part 2: Arms
Here is Ryan after the allergy testing had begun. The picture is blurry, but I couldn't pass up a great smile. They started with the "scratch test" where the skin is just barely punctured and allergens are released on the site. It's more like a scratch as opposed to a real puncture. Hence the title "Scratch Test". This test was "inconclusive", so they brought out the "big guns" or at least a big tray of needles.

Here you can see where he was stuck with several tiny needles so that the allergens could be injected just under the skin. He didn't like it, but he never cried. I could tell it was hurting a little though. (It had to hurt...I heard a little girl in the room next to us undergoing the same test crying and screaming and saying it hurts. She was probably 8 or 9 years old.) The top right allergen is histamine. It's used as a control. All others are compared to the histamine reaction which should always show red and rashy unless you are full of ANTI-histamines.
Here is the other arm (left). The bottom two sticks were C for cat and D for dog. They tested for a number of potential allergens.

Would you believe Ryan really has no allergies speak of?! Not even cat or dog which are two of my highest allergens. I guess when God decided to heal this little miracle, He decided to cover all the bases. Ryan showed only a minor reaction to 3 things: dust, pigweed, and bluegrass, so I guess I'll dust the house a little more often. I won't plant any pigweed in my yard this year, and I'll skip out on the bluegrass too.

The doctor was a little surprised by the results. Since Ryan is sick every couple of weeks the doctor was expecting a pretty strong allergic response. Since that didn't happen she decided to go ahead and have an immunology work-up. That is where the blood draw comes in. We won't know the results of that for several weeks. I don't really know what they are looking for, but I'm sure I'll find out with time.

For now the doctor has prescribed an inhaled steroid, Qvar...I think, for Ryan to take as a preventive measure to hopefully help him not get so sick especially when it comes to the lungs. He takes it 2 times a day. We will taper off the amount given each time in a couple of weeks. We FINALLY got the appropriate inhalent set-up...FINALLY. As you recall I've been fighting with our pediatrician's office to get a mask for his inhalent spacer for several weeks now. Today I mentioned to the doctor that we had not been able to get a masked spacer for Ryan so any inhalents were pointless/worthless to us since he doesn't have the ability/know-how to use a common inhalent. Guess what?!!!! She had one in her office that she said, "I've had this in my office for some time, and I've been waiting for the right patient to give it too." Praise you Jesus! Finally...a sample...a freebie...a MEDICAL freebie. I wanted to jump up and hug the doctor right then. Ryan loves his new inhalent. They showed him how to use it in the clinic and we have since used it at home for his evening dose. He didn't want to stop. I'll have to get a picture of that real soon. He loves to push the inhalent canister down to release the medication, and then he loves to breathe in and out through that mask (which really surprised me). Oh yea...that was Body Part 3: The Mouth

Body Part 4: The Feet
After our appointment that took almost 4 hours I decided to treat my little boy to some fun. He went to sleep almost immediately upon climbing in the car. He was one tired little boy. After he took a little bit of a nap I took him to Toys-R-Us and bought him a little truck because he was such a little trooper today, and a new shirt to take pictures in. Pictures were scheduled for tomorrow morning, but since we were already in the City I decided to go to the mall and at least ask if there was an opening for today. There was! An immediate opening! I took Ryan to the bathroom, cleaned him up and changed his clothes. He did great and we got some excellent pictures. It was a much better experience compared to our last picture-taking session. ( Which is why I've delayed having his 2-year-old pictures taken until now.) I really would love to get a really good camera and take some photography lessons, but that's a story for another day. After pictures we went to the play area in the mall and Ryan got to run and play and jump and climb and be around other little kids about his size. It was great. He loved it! (I have a couple of very funny stories about our pictures and mall excursion, but I am definitely saving them for Monday!)

Oh yea...I about forgot...the feet. I wore the WORST possible shoes for the day. Even though we didn't do that much walking today, the shoes I chose to wear today ended up rubbing horrible blisters all down the sides of both of my feet.

Body Part 5: The Whole Thing! Today has been a wonderful day. We've been incredibly blessed, and I just feel great! And since Ryan has been giggling and laughing all the way up until now, 9:34 p.m., I'd say Ryan does too!