When Band-aids and Bell Peppers Attack!

Well. That had to be the absolute weirdest sickness I’ve ever had. After I said I was definitely getting sick, I went to bed feeling like total dirt.

When I woke up, I still felt like dirt…but the fever had broken!

I spent the morning absolutely wanting to crawl into bed and sleep for a week. Finally, I set Jed up with some PBS Kids computer games, sat down with a romantic comedy movie of MY choosing on the TV, and held Zac while he and I cat-napped.

By the time we got up I felt human again.

So weird. I’ve never gotten that cruddy feeling that fast and felt human again so quickly.

Anyway, I’m due for a little kiddo update, since a few things happened recently.

Poor Zac is having a rough month. After the oats re-trial and subsequent reaction, and the constipation that wiped him out, he had more mishaps and reactions.

While I was at work and the kids were with my parents, they were all enjoying Jed’s tee ball game one night. Zac was running around, playing chase with another little boy, and forgot to look where he was going.

BAM! He slammed face first into the edge of the bleachers.

Poor little guy cut his face in two places, but I’m so thankful. He hit right next to his eye, and the damage could have been so much worse!

Within minutes, he was grinning and running as if nothing had ever happened. Even the other parents at the game commented to my mom, “Man! That is one tough little kid!”

Even though Zac is  a tough little kid, he’s quite certain to make absolutely sure that everyone knows when he has a boo-boo! And he insists on being “doctored” whenever possible.

Since those face cuts needed to be kept clean, Mom put band-aids on.

When I got home, I, of course, changed the band-aids and kept tending the wounds.

Unfortunately, MY band-aids were not so well tolerated by Zac as my moms band-aids were.

Sunday night, Zac woke up screaming. This time, it only took me ten minutes to figure out it was the band-aids.

Even after removing them, though, he continued to be terribly upset. It took hours to calm him down enough to go to sleep, and then, he only could sleep next to me.

It was a very rough night. 

I can only blame exhaustion for what happened next. On Monday, deciding that overall Zac seemed to have recovered completely from the oats reaction, we proceeded to begin a new food trial.

Green bell peppers.

The whole reasoning behind choosing this food to trial is simply that I would like to expand his diet with more fruits and veggies, and since the fresh season is just beginning, things I know I can find at the Farmer’s Market seem like the way to go.

And I love bell peppers! I knew they’d add good flavor to his food, regardless of how high they rank in nutrition compared to other foods.

The poor kiddo still eats a fairly bland diet. Flavor would be nice!

He ate about 1/8th of a small bell pepper that night, and proceeded to sleep like an angel.

The next morning, though, he had a terrible diarrhea diaper filled with mucous and a little blood.

That afternoon, he asked to go take a warm bath because his tummy hurt.

Of course, by early evening, he asked to go take a bath because he just wanted to play in the water. He specifically said his tummy didn’t hurt any more. So, that’s good.

On Wednesday he had another bad diaper, this time with bright red acidic burns in places.

I posited to Darrel that maybe we moved too fast after the oats reaction. He countered with the idea that we should have waited longer after the band-aid reaction.

I suspect we’re both correct.

I sort of want to kick myself for this one. 

As of this morning, his little face was healing but still showing signs of where the cuts AND the band-aids hurt his face. His diaper rash had healed, and the burns were healing, but he still had 3 small actual wounds left to clear up.

Otherwise, he was doing fine! Darrel and I both noticed that Zac was talking more today than he has the last few days, which is typical for him after a reaction. We were feeling like we could relax again.

And then.

I haven’t had a chance to mention it, but we did finally bring the cats home from my parents. It seemed logical. The boys love their cats and missed them, of course, but mostly, they’re spending about half the month exposed to the cats (and their food and litter) when at my parents house for work, anyway. Why not try bringing the cats home to see how it goes?

I bought special litter made of crushed walnuts (supposedly corn and chemical free) and their cat food is grain free already.

What does that have to do with my “and then”?

AND THEN Zac came screaming up to me and Darrel, with kitty litter covering him from head to toe and all over the inside of his mouth.

USED kitty litter.

Ew ew ew ew!

It didn’t take long to discover that Jed had decided to clean the kitty litter all by himself (code for “make a gigantic mess while doing only a tiny bit of cleaning”) and, for some inexplicable reason, FLUNG a scoop of kitty litter into his brothers face!

I quick got Zac cleaned up and scrubbed off, cleaned up the kitty litter from the floor, and had a serious chat with Jed about throwing things in people’s face (after he got out of the corner).

We *think* the cats being home will be okay, but we assumed kitty litter wouldn’t wind up in Zac’s mouth at this point. He’s not eating everything he can find off the floor any more, after all. It never occurred to me that Jed would throw it at him!

With any luck, he didn’t actually swallow any of it.

Well. There’s nothing to do but – once again – go on gut rest and give it some time. Every time Zac has a reaction, he self-imposes a restricted diet on himself. He usually only eats quinoa, banana, salt, chicken, beef, eggs, and now sweet potato for a while after his tummy gets out of whack.

Slowly he starts eating other foods again, but for a few days, he takes it easy on himself.

He’s a pretty smart kiddo.

We’ll keep him reaction free for as long as possible, and I’m hoping we can attempt another food trial in the last half of May.

We’ve absolutely GOT to take advantage of this summer to get as many food trials in as possible. If next winter is like our previous two winters, we will make almost no headway once the weather turns.

Fingers crossed and prayers that this is the last of the reactions for a few months!