Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Always Something New To Worry About

Yes, in my world, there is always something new to worry about.

This week, (surprise!) it's Keegan. As I have mentioned in previous posts, Keegs suffers from frequent nosebleeds. This has kicked up a notch from frequent to almost daily. And these aren't your run-of-the-mill, stops-in-30-seconds-type nosebleeds either. More like 30 minutes later, and maybe we can take the Kleenex plugs out of your nose type. He will be sleeping, or watching t.v. or playing, and all of the sudden, it's the red sea. My carpet throughout the house looks like a crime scene. Last week, there was the unfortunate sneeze-and-cough during nosebleed session that turned my bathroom into a scene from The Shining (Tony's not here, Mrs. Torrence!)

That being said, I have taken him to the pediatrician regarding these before, back when they were weekly occurances. She said it was due to his allergies, and to put a humidifier in his room, use Rhinaris nasal lubricant, and she prescribed Flonase nasal spray. Well, turns out, Keegs is one of the small percentage of Flonase users that react to the spray by having, you guessed it, heavy nosebleeds. So that was out. So I've been doing everything we should be, including a daily allergy med, with no avail.

The scary part is, aside from the blood, is the way he looks after. He is white as a sheet. You can't see his lips; they blend right into his skin. And he is cold all of the time. He is always asking for blankets, or an extra sweater, even on days like yesterday, when it was 72F here, and we were all in T-shirts, and he wanted his jacket on and zipped.

So I have made him an appointment to revisit the issue. I did the paranoid mother thing and did a search engine on frequent nosebleeds in children and came up with two viable explanations, neither good, but one infinitely more acceptable than the other. First, that he is anaemic. The other, and horrifying one is leukemia based, and I refuse to even go there (even though there is two cases of leukemia family history on my husband's side...STOP IT! Shannon, please...).

Our appointment is on April 5, so I will keep you posted on any developments in this area.

I did have some lovely things to share, but I am burned out from the above. I will post again later to shed some optimism over this worry-weary blog.

3 comments:

radiogurl said...

You've already taken your own advice. Don't diagnose online. You'll have some answers soon.

*hugs*

Anonymous said...

Wow. That is scary. But don't go there. keep us posted.

Shannon said...

A friend of mine suggested nasal cauterization. Kripes! Can you say OUCH!? Keeping options open and thoughts optimistic. (You're right Lea, the internet sometimes is a bad, bad thing...)