Still battling at night

It has been 3 months already, still counting the days till the return of beautiful skin & most importantly better night sleep. These days, we are struggling with Bryan itchy skin nightly. Things are not good at night but we are definitely better in coping after years' of painful experience.
There was once I dread going to sleep for all the crying, kicking, scolding, spanking that happened during the night. It was definitely not restful night for us & Bryan too of course. Most of the time, we kept complaining & forgot about how Bryan felt. We were losing sleep trying to apply cream or stop him from scratching, Bryan on the other hand didn't have a good night either. He scratched uncontrollably due to the terrible itch. We couldn't understand with our tired mind & body so he was being reprimanded for scratching. Poor Bryan, no one can understand the amount of frustration he has with the terribly itch, & rather than helping him feeling better, we sometimes scold him, beat him hand or shoo him away so as to be able to get back to sleep ourselves. I am getting a bit emotional while pening these as I recall Bryan's miserable face this morning when I sent him to school. Needless to say we had another lousy night yesterday.
We are out of odds on how to improve the situation at night. We change his pajamas in the middle of the night as the one he is wearing has too much dead skin or whatever that possibly irritates the skin even more. But the itch doesn't just stop there. Have to stay positive to keep going. Well, yesterday was quite bad so chances are tonight will be better.

An unending battle

When everything seemed too comfortable for hubby & I, we got our constantly itching boy back! Bryan started being very itchy in July. Almost 2 months has passed, finally his skin is not as scary but far from being itch free. Bryan still scratches like 3 times in his sleep, shedding lots of skin Again! So much that I wanted to get a handheld vacuum for the bed. Ooh, reminds me of the coat fur cleaner I used last time to stick all the skin from the bed, a cheaper & simpler alternative!
Saw a baby with bad eczema patches on cheek, near mouth & scalp in church today. It was heart breaking to see. Like many of the strangers who approached me when I was with Bryan's bad eczema, I went to talk to the mom. She sounded pretty helpless, saying her daughter is on second dose of antibiotic but still looking like that. It seemed the baby is rubbing herself against pillow & bed (can you imagine the terrible eczema itch). And like many of those helpful parents who sympathized our situation with Bryan, I gave her my 2 cents. Will bring her some cream the next time I go to church. Blessed the family, and hope her little baby's eczema get better.

First School Party

Today is Bryan's school's 1st birthday celebration. Undoubtedly birthday cake is a must have in a birthday celebration. The cake available here are mostly with egg. Bryan is allergic to eggs & is sensible enough to know that cakes are not meant for him, except cake baked by Ama (grandma) or vegetarian cake from the bakery. Feel bad that he can't enjoy the food as the rest of the kids, but really proud of his control & displine.

In order to get Bryan some food that he can safely enjoy, I volunteered to bring some from home. I was busy at wee hour this morning to fry udon with shallot, carrot, cabbage & chicken. Supposed to cook 2 packets of udon, but it didn't fit in my 10 inch or it is 12 inch frying pan. Split into 2 portions instead but due to the time constraint & my inexperience in handling portion that big, I could only get slightly more than half of the udon done. Will dispose the other half that didn't make it to the party as lunch.

Made some red dragon fruit milk jelly too last night. Came out pretty nice looking in pink, didn't need any food coloring. Was a little sweeter than usual, hope the kids & teachers like it.

Being a parent of a child with food allergy is not easy. I have to bring him his own snacks to school daily. And we only dine in a couple of places which have been tested safe for him. But I feel blessed that Bryan's allergy isn't life threatening & have faith that he will eventually grow out of it.

Happy 1st anniversary

Yes, juicing for 1 year! It was a great accomplishment for me, seeing how Bryan's skin is getting better by the day. There will many more years to come I am sure!
The improvement seems miraculous now but it didn't come by easily. He was shedding some much skin during the 1st six months that I wished I had the time to vacuum the bed daily. Bath time was another challenge, luckily I got my husband, who was the brave hero to handle the screaming & crying boy. Nowadays, my mom in law or the foreign helper at her place can bath him without any trouble.
Really thankful for everything! And I wish that all parents of children with eczema & adults with eczema have the chance to try out vegetable juicing. :)

Towards better sleep zzzzz

The following was written back in Nov 2008. Got too much going on until now, when I found this missing post.
It has never been an easy task to get scratcher to sleep and stay asleep. "Fought" with him many times just to get him to sleep. At one time, it was the most stressful event of the day. He is < 24 months now yet he had only slept through the night a couple days ever since we brought him home from hospital. Thought that I was just being unlucky to brought back a lousy sleeper. Didn't know the underlying reason. When i was breastfeeding him, we thought he woke up in the middle of the night for feeding. Until I weaned him recently only I realized that it was eczema that kept him up during the night.
Being the primary care-taker, I am as sleep deprived as scratcher. On certain days, the night waking was worse than taking care of a newborn baby. After a long night, the result was a fussy and clingy toddler plus a cranky mommy. Whenever that happened, everything became a challenge, be it meal time, nap time, bath time etc. There were just too many episodes of me running out of the house due to stress of handling a crying toddler whom couldn't be soothed.
I kept telling myself it is time to change. All these unnecessary stress have had an unhealthy effect on both of us. He had seen me in tears so many times that he will say "mommy is happy, mommy is not crying". I felt a lot of guilt when I hear that each time. I tried to be strong but it was harder than anyone thought.
There are few things that we did to our bedroom to make scratcher more comfortable at night. We had a air purifier & recently added an osim humidifier in our air-conditioned room. Didn't notice significant improvement when the air purifier was introduced but with the humifier, Bryan seemed to scratch less during the night. The other thing is that I am sleeping with him now. Although we both are practically sharing a single mattress on the floor, I think I have better sleep than waking up, getting to him & climbing back to bed couple times a night. Also I gave him a lot of comfort to get him to sleep, like rubbing his back, scratching his leg and let him hold my hand or touch my back etc anything we can do to prevent a cranky clingy sleep deprived toddler.

Dermatologist's Visit

Finally brought scratcher to the dermatologist. Much to my disappointment, she did not provide any breakthrough on how to treat scratcher's eczema. Still moisturize all time, use steriod cream/ protopic and antihistamine when neccesary.
I have been researching the web quite a bit these days. Lots of stuff to discover in this world of cyber space. What caught my attention was how eczema sufferer's diet could improve their skin condition and thus reduce the number of flare-out. I tried to testify what I read with the dermatologist. Flax seed, spirulina, fish oil, probiotics, evening primrose oil and carrot juice were what I have gathered. Unfortunately, there aren't any conclusive evident that any of these help except for evening primrose oil but its effectiveness is not really convincing too. One thing to note about probiotics. I was asked to consume them to reduce the risk of eczema for my next pregnancy.
Even though, there isn't any research data to support the effectiveness on these supplement, I plan to go ahead and slowly introduce them to scratcher. At least there is something we can do to improve scratcher's eczema. Will have to start micro-managing his diet. It is going to take some time, hopefully we are on the right track.....

An itch that never go away

Scratcher's eczema has been haunting us for the past month or so. Coincidently it is about the same time which I weaned him from breastfeeding. He was 25 months then and I decided it is time. He took it alright, just being more clingy than usual at times. I am not sure if his deterioting skin has anything to do with the breastmilk. But it is natural for me to blame myself for all that happened. I used to have a restricted diet while on breastfeeding. But whenever scratcher had a flare-out, I was the culprit to blame, not by anyone but myself.
I have no idea what is the trigger this time. It may be due to the bad air quality, stress or food he ate.
We had seen our pediatrician twice. During the first visit, scratcher skin's condition was not as bad, but he was waking up a lot during the night. The doctor prescribed antihistamine at night & protopic for application. We gave scratcher the antihistamine for a week but he woke up as much so we decided to stop. I didn't use protopic on scratcher due to the potential cancer risk. The skin around scratcher's neck got really bad last week. It looked inflamed and we brought him to see the pediatrician again. This time we were given Elomet, a steriod cream. Scratcher's old skin started to shed revealing new smooth skin after one application. I believe Elomet is quite a powerful steriod so I stopped using on scratcher after 2 applications.
The clear beautiful smooth skin lasted for a day or two only. After one week, scratcher neck & other problematic area returned to their old self and were as itchy as ever. I am clueless on how to help scratcher to relief his itchy skin. I have decided that it is time we see a dermatologist.