Labs, Lollipops, and Little Lilly along for the Ride

Today was the much dreaded yearly allergy lab workup. (Noah's, Lilly's is in two weeks) We started dreading this day when we scheduled it. His last lab work up was when he was 3 and it took two nurses and two teary eyed parents to hold him. He was supposed to have another one at 4 but he had 2 scary ER visits and we decided to not put him through any more trauma at that point.

We spent some time in the office with our allergy specialist who is WONDERFUL. Seriously, she is one of the kindest and best doctors I have ever had any dealings with and I trust my children to her completely. Then it was off to the lab. To get us through the waiting time, I pulled out the stash of suckers in the diaper bag. One red lollipop and one blue lollipop and one almost-two year old wearing white pants...um note to self, Lilly should not own white pants...

Then they finally called N's name and the nervousness really set it.

I'm sure you are thinking, what's the big deal? It's a finger stick? Oh no, it's a tube in his vein (similar to an IV) where they draw out no less that 5 very very large vials of blood. Necessary? Yes...fun...no

With that said, I could not be prouder of my little man. He did shed a few tears and got a little panicky when they tied the rubber band around his arm to find a good vein, but he leaned on my shoulder and was so so very brave. After the initial stick he was able to calm himself down and even talked to the nurses while they were coaxing all of the samples out of his veins. Now we wait 7 to 10 days to see if any of his allergy levels have changed. I have prayed and prayed that this would improve for him, but if it doesn't I am accepting that it is for a reason and we will continue to do the very best we can to make things safe and normal for him! If it does cross your mind, say a little prayer that we could get some promising results. All of the statistics say that 90% of kids will never out grow this type of allergy, but I know that God isn't concerned with statistics.

After the medical business was done for the day we did let Noah take a little run to Toys R Us to get a treat for his bravery. He picked out a remote control snake...let's see if I can be brave with that realistic looking thing running loose through the house, and Lilly finagled a new baby stroller out of the trip because...well because she's two and she's so stinkin' cute and she's so stinkin' loud when you try to wrestle the stroller out of her chubby little sticky death grip...and it was 12 bucks...a small price to pay to avoid a meltdown... (Please refrain from commenting about the backlash of spoiling your children!)

Then we fed the masses (or at least the two overly hungry children!) and packed them back into the car, made a trip to the pharmacy and it was back to Brownsville!

Also as an add on...I must brag just a smidge about my hubby...yes I know I give him a hard way to go on this blog most of the time...especially when he steals my password and hijacks my blog...but he really is the very best Dad. He went to every dr appointment with me before I had either baby and he never ever misses their appointments if he can help it. He has been our rock through all of the hard tests, the even harder diagnosis, the very very long ambulance rides and he has wiped more tears and comforted more fears than I could list in a book. When I've gone as far as I could go, he has stayed up all night with both of our kids after ER visits and when they were very sick. He then would get up at 5 am and be off to work with never a complaint. I've watched him let our kids sleep on his chest while he held them sitting up in a chair so that he could make sure that they were breathing easier. And today, as always, he was right on time to make sure Noah had Mommy and Daddy to tell him everything would be OK and that it would be over soon

And it was...and I'm thankful for that!