No Rest For the Weary
I can’t give you details, but we’ve had some issues this week with physical aggression and Jesse has been the recipient of it. It is a big deal.
I am so torn.
Does my child even feel safe in his own house?
I can handle these issues all day long, but I’m not sure how much I can handle if it is all being directed at my children. This is exactly why we originally set a very young age limit on the foster children we were willing to accept into our home…yet we caved and accepted a ten year old. I can handle ‘little kid violence’. Hitting, throwing things, biting…it’s different when the person being mean to you is your size. But when they are TWICE your size and sleeping in the room next to yours, it’s scarey and intimidating.
Jesse was very sick about two years ago. For over a year, Jesse would get sick every 2-4 weeks with high fevers, diahrrea, vomiting, and stomach pains. He never ever went more than four weeks without getting sick. If someone around him had a cold, he’d end up with an extreme version of the same cold or virus and it would last for seven to ten days instead of a normal 3 or 4. After months and months of surgeries, procedures, blood tests, visits to specialists, etc, the only thing that was EVER found was that Jesse has some immune deficiences in his blood which cause him to get sick easier. They even gave him a booster shot of one of his vaccines because his blood work showed the vaccine didn’t work the first time. You know what happened after the booster shot?? A fever of 105 for six days!
It’s not celiac disease.
It’s not chrones disease.
It’s not leukemia.
He’s not allergic to a single thing.
All that could be found was the immune deficiencies in his blood.
Another thing that seemed to affect Jesse’s health was his environment. Jesse is a home body. He likes to be at home and he likes to be with family. For that year and a half or so, everytime we’d go out of town, even to grandparents’ houses, Jesse would have a fever within 24 hours. It was mind boggling to say the least.
Jesse’s health played a big part in our decision to homeschool him last year. The boys have been on Juice Plus+ for two years now, and I even refused Jesse’s four year old shots for about eight months to give his body more time to strengthen. Jesse has been healthy for over a year and a half now! I can’t even remember the last time someone puked in my house….until today.
The first day of Thanksgiving break (about 10 days ago) Jesse began having diahrrea. It was SO bad that his bottom was completely raw and he cried all the time for days because he hurt so bad. I gave him children’s pepto bismal around the clock (according to the directions of course) and it never really seemed to go away completely.
As I said in the beginning, this has been a stressful week for Jesse because of things that have happened in the last four or five days. Every night, Jesse tells me he doesn’t feel very well. This morning (saturday) he woke up with stomach cramps around 6:00am. By 6:30am he was hovered over the toilet vomitting.
He just wants to be held.
I called my mom to tell her, and her first response was, “Oh Audrey, he is stressed.”
My heart is breaking. I really think stress is causing his symptoms. I don’t know what to do.
I gave him some anti-nausea medicine and he hasn’t vomitted again.
We’re suppose to go to Jesse’s school this evening for caroling and the lighting of their Christmas tree. Jesse also has a birthday party to go to tomorrow afternoon.
Please do not misunderstand me. I am under no dilusions that we will ever have ‘normal, perfect’ foster children in our home. Kids will be kids and these children will likely always have issues of some sort. But no mother in her right mind would be okay with taking someone into her home and then subjecting her own children to verbal and/or physical abuse by this person.
I am praying that the Lord heals Jesse and gives Josh and me wisdom as to what steps need to be taken. I do not know what will happen next.
Please pray for us.
~audrey