Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Growing pains

My poor little 7 year old son, was up last night screaming in pain.

I was downstairs cheering on my Ravens team during monday night football, when widget comes down the stairs and says "Mom, brother is crying. He needs you." I guess I had the volume too loud or was soo into the game, I didn't hear him. OOPS. "Thanks son for getting me. You are a good brother for taking care of younger one."

So I go upstairs to his room and he indeed is not just crying but screaming "OWIE, OWIE, OWIE" while thrashing about in the bed. He is not even fully awake. I climb the ladder to his top bunk and try to wake him to find out what is wrong. I call hubby in for back up. I eventually get out of him that his knees are hurting. AHH! The "growing pains" are back. He has struggled periodically with these "growing pains" in his legs. We have talked to a couple different doctors about it, and they still conclude it is "growing pains".

He goes through periods of time, where the pain wakes him up out of a sound sleep. He just cries and cries and asks us to take away the pain. We have tried massaging his legs, warm compresses, ice packs, warm water spraying on his knees in the tub, walking, stretching, etc.(and of course this is always in the middle of the night, ugh.) The last resort we always turn to is Motrin, and it is really the only thing that helps. Within fifteen minutes, you can see the tension in his face start to fade. We really should just start with the Motrin, but I just hate to give it to him if we can find another way of relieving the pain. It has been over a year since he has done this. Well, he started it again last night, but it was worse than ever.

So we go through all our hoops and end up giving him the Motrin. We finally got him settled and back to sleep after it kicked in and relieved the pain in his knees. Two hours later, he does it again!! This has NEVER happened before. Once we get him back to sleep, he is down for the count. But not last night.

We had put him in our room once he fell asleep on the couch downstairs. We were not even going to attempt to put him back in his bed (he sleeps on the top bunk), it was hard enough getting him down out of bed. He is a big boy and he's "growing" LOL. Two hours later, he wakes up again screaming "OWIE, OWIE, OWIE". What do I do now? He says it is his feet? What? His feet? This is definitely a new one. He has already had our miracle silver bullet cure of Motrin and it is too early for him to have more. We try a few things as he continues to cry out in pain. Finally I tell hubby "See if you can find any Tylenol". We have had to alternate the 2 meds before with fevers, so lets give it a try and make it through the night.

Hubby is searching everywhere in all our little spots we keep medicine. Finally he finds an almost empty bottle that has one last dose in it. Hubby gives it to son. Twenty minutes later and after hubby praying over him for those twenty minutes, he is sound asleep....again. And this time for the night...Well, whatever is left of the night anyways.

Son wakes up this morning a little tired and asks "Mom, Why did I wake up in your bed this morning?" I asked him "Don't you remember your legs hurting last night?" He says "Oh, yeah. I guess I remember them bothering me a little." I am thinking "WHAT? A LITTLE! YOU HAD ME UP DURING THE NIGHT FOR A LITTLE? YOU WERE SCREAMING LIKE THAT FOR A LITTLE?" But instead I ask him "How are your legs feeling this morning?" He says with authority "OH, PERFECT!" What a relief!

I really am glad he does not remember all the pain he was in and that he was half asleep through it. It's bad enough Hubby and I remember it.

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