GREAT TIP TUESDAY: Hug your children!

I know, it goes without saying that you already hug your children, but these past few weeks have given me reason to give this as a tip.  My daughter Isabella (Bella, Izzy, Tinks) has been having headaches everyday for the past four months.  I took her the Dr for the first time about three months ago and that led to treating with ibuprofen along with a headache log for two more weeks.  The next appointment the Dr gave her some meds to help with headaches, they did but they switched from getting them at night to getting them during the day at school and in the afternoon and evening time.  They helped with the late nights, (which I was very thankful for, I felt like I had a newborn child for a while and she's 9!) but she was still getting headaches.  The Dr didn't really know why she was getting them either, we had just moved and was starting a new school but she seems to be acclimating to everything very well and it had been a couple of months since the move.  So we went to the Dr again two more weeks later and the Dr decided to do a CT scan.

My husband has a PhD and so do most of my friends, some are even MD/PhD and most of them work with cancer in one way or another so I know a lot about medical talk and procedures.  When the Dr said CT scan I knew she was looking for tumors or masses or something not right with my Bella's brain.  I knew everything was going to be alright with the scan because she had no other symptoms that come with tumors ect., but that didn't make it any less scary.  They were able to get her in very quickly, but the results did not come as fast. It was the longest two days of my life, I wanted to call the Dr, but held out because I know it takes time for Dr's to look at the results. The Dr called and left a message for me to call her back; now I have never had a Dr tell me to call them back unless it was bad news. I have always had the nurse call and say everything was normal or that I needed to come back in for some further tests. The Dr calling me back freaked me out and I couldn't reason with myself at all, the more I tried the worse I got.  So I tried to go about the business of my day, I sent orders out, I promoted some items, but I couldn't give it all I had and finally gave up.  The Dr finally called back and said everything was fine, I gave the thumbs up to my husband and we were so relieved the scan came back clear.  I got off the phone and all I wanted was to hug Bella forever, to keep her safe from anything else that might go wrong.

Now that we knew she had nothing wrong with her brain we still needed to get to the bottom of the headaches.  We went to see a Neurologist this week and she thinks that even though Bella seems to be doing well with her school and with the move she is stressed about it.  So for now she is staying on the meds, keeping the stress to a minimum, sleeping a lot, and lots of talking to mom and dad about anything and everything that is bothering her.  Hopefully this will work and she can come off the meds soon (I'm not a fan of kids being in meds unless it is absolutely necessary and you have expelled all other options).

So hug your children whenever you can because you never know when that can change.  Bella's story turned out to be stress, but other's do not turn out as good as hers.