The Pinch Store

Over the summer, I wrote about Jack needing breathing treatments.  Often when Jack gets a cold and a cough, it turns into wheezing.  If you’ve never seen or heard a wheezing kid, be glad.  It is so hard to watch your child struggle to breath and the noise accompanied by it is chilling.

Over the last 6 months, Jack has had several bouts of wheezing.  We have a nebulizer, but I have been hesitant to use it without the doctor seeing him first.  Partly because I feel like wheezing is something a child should be seen for and partly because I wanted the episodes to be on his “record”.  I kinda had a feeling that this was turning into a thing and if I needed to insist on further testing I didn’t want just one episode in his chart.

So after a good four or five wheezing episodes in six months, my sister-in-law encouraged us to have Jack tested for allergies.  I have seasonal allergies and my husband has a whole host of allergies so it’s not unrealistic to think that Jack’s wheezing might be attributable to allergies.  After Jack’s latest wheezing episode, the doctor gave us a script for allergy testing (he also said not to be afraid to use the nebulizer without consulting them, so there’s that monkey off my back).

Last week as I got the boys ready to head to the lab, my husband sat down with Jack and explained what was going to happen.  Poor Jack just kept repeating that he didn’t want a pinch (that’s what our doctor says about shots.  “just a pinch”).  We told him that it was ok to not want a pinch, but he needed to get one.  At this point, I was fearful of what was going to happen at the lab and was envisioning having to literally lay on Jack to get the blood work done.

Like all things Jack, I needn’t have worried.  We were taken back immediately and Jack eagerly crawled into the chair.  The tech had me sit in the chair with Jack (Xander calmly looked on from the confines of his stroller).  A second tech joined us and instructed me to hold his right arm down and his left shoulder back.  The second tech held his left arm and hand.  At this point, Jack grew slightly irritated and kept asking that the tech let go of his hand.  Then came the pinch.  He cried.  I did not (ok, I almost cried, but successfully blinked back the tears).  After the tech got the two vials of blood that she needed, Jack got bandaged up and got a sticker.  Then the techs let us sit there for a few minutes.  I waited until Jack calmed down and then the techs and I started making small talk with him.  Eventually, Jack warmed back up to his new friends and gave them both hugs as we left.

After leaving we headed to get some lunch.  On the way home we had to pass the lab.  Jack proclaimed that he needed to go potty.  I told him that we were almost home.  He asked if we could just stop at “The Pinch Store” because he saw a potty when we were there.  The rest of the day, he told everyone that he saw that he had been at “The Pinch Store” and had gotten a band-aid and a sticker.

Last week the test results came back.  Totally negative for all the allergies that we tested for.  I can’t say I’m totally shocked, but there it is.  So now we don’t really have an answer as to why he wheezes.  At this point, we are told that he’s too young and his symptoms are to mild for an asthma diagnosis (which I am fine with).  The doctor says that some kids are more prone to respiratory issues than others and given his family history of allergies and that he was a c-section baby it does put him at a higher risk.  So, our course of action now is to just to keep up with the breathing treatments on an as needed basis and hopefully he will grow out of these issues at some point.  And if he gets worse, well, we’ll deal with that if the time comes.  Although, I suspect if the time comes, we may need another trip to “The Pinch Store.”

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