That phrase seems to enter my vocabulary more and more lately. Our home health nurse sent me to hospital with Zine one day. The pediatrican sent us with Chloe a few weeks ago. And today Chloe’s neurologist sent her to hospital. I have a love hate relationship with this place! I hate to be here but I love that we have always received excellent care and compassionate nurses.
This girl started with a headache on Sunday. On Monday her head was worse but not unbearable. Yesterday her head got to hurting really bad. She didn’t even want to go to art class! And when she passes up art class you know she is sick! She stayed in her room basically all day in the dark! So since I realized we were going down the same path we did a few weeks ago, I called the neurologist. They told me what to do to try to help her sleep last night. They saw her this morning! One look from her neurologist today and she knew Chloe was sick!!
Sunglasses were not even good enough for the ride there. Once there, she only wanted to lay with her head covered. I’m thankful that she already has a neurologist that knows her and that we trust!
Dr. said that once a migraine had hung on this long that oral meds were probably not going to do anything for it. So to get the pain under control she would just need to go to hospital and get some meds to get some relief and then we can treat from home. And she also worked to try to come up with a plan to try to keep these headaches from getting so bad in the future.
She’s such a trooper, especially when it comes to IVs. I don’t even think she flinched!
They started her out with the same drugs as last time. But they didn’t seem to make a bit of difference. So they gave a second drug and that helped. Took her pain from an 8 to a 6. Also made her feel drugged. She just laid in the dark with her eyes closed for hours! The doctor then suggested us giving her another drug to see if we could get her pain down a little more! The nurse was surprised that the doctor had ordered this medicine. She said, this is the big guns! It was a drug that could lower her blood pressure and cause issues with her heart. So they were very attentive during that process. But she tolerated the medicine very well. And it definitely helped the pain! When we left her pain was almost gone. And her sensitivity to the light and to sound was gone!
When you struggle with anxiety and depression already, and then you add drugs that affect the Central Nervous System, it always messes with existing anxiety and depression. So I am praying against any side effects from the drugs she had today. Also since she has muscular dystrophy, when she encounters things like this, it just wipes her out afterwards for several days. Seems like it takes longer to get her strength back!
She’s struggling with the fact that she has something else wrong with her. We are both feeling pretty overwhelmed at learning to live with this. How much we push, how much we rest, how long is too long, etc. But I told her on the way home, there was one thing I knew…we would deal with it. We would figure out how to live life with migraines. We have figured out how to live with muscular dystrophy and a movement disorder and anxiety and depression…I was certain we would learn to live with even these crazy things!
I’ve been working with her on taking thoughts captive. We can dwell on the bad and imagine all possible bad scenarios. Or we can choose to trust Jesus and look for the positives. We have been practicing taking situations and looking at the bad (which is her default most of the time) but then turning it around and looking for the good in the same situation! We’ve also been looking for gratefuls every day! I remind her of the song, if you keep your eyes on the storm, you will wonder if Jesus loves you. But if you keep your eyes on the cross, you will know He always loved you. I think we all need to double check our focus regularly! Where’s your focus today?
