sometimes you just gotta shake your head, shrug and say, "whatever!"

... and then maybe laugh a little bit... because, you know... what else can you do, really?

so this morning, the boys got up before the alarm and came downstairs. asher stole my muffin, but bram asked nicely and got one from the kitchen. then i looked at the clock and realized the alarm hadn't gone off, and so i sent them back upstairs. bram declares that he's going to leave his muffin downstairs because "it's dirty" (???) so he doesn't want to eat it in his room.

asher, who has, on occasion, been known to sneak food, also gets up and starts to make his way to the stairs. i looked and noticed that he had something in his hand, though i couldn't tell what it was. suspecting that it might be another muffin, i ask, "what's that in your hand, dude?" (trying to sound all innocent and naively curious so as not to tempt him to lie).

he looks at me with "duh!" written all over his face and says, "a rock." and he showed me, and yup. it's a rock. because you know, what else would a 4-year-old boy be holding in the living room at 7:15 in the morning??? (see the title of this post.)

ok, all the cuteness and fun asher-ness aside... we need to move on to the other kind of asher-ness... and sigh...

so, yesterday, i kept asher home from school. i'm still trying to figure out how he managed to open his eyes when he woke up; his eyelids were just. that. puffy. he was also a weird colour (see definition of "asher pink" under "A Lexicon of Asher" on the sidebar), and he was mottled all over. not pretty. then, when i was getting him dressed, he was having trouble balancing and his eyes weren't focused on anything. i says, "how ya feelin', dude?" he answers,

"dizzy."

cue requisite questions re cotton balls in ears and so forth. the answer was no to all of that, but he is clearly dizzy.

so i stopped making his lunch and called the school to let them know that asher would not be going to school.

not to mention, he still has that nasty cough, which emerg determined is viral bronchitis, so really, should he be at school to potentially pass that around? i don't really think so. anyway...

asher wanted his dad, so i dropped him off and headed out to run a couple errands which needed to be... um... run?? (why does that not sound right?... wow, the title of this post works on so many levels! who knew?!) as i was a-walking, i bumped into the secretary from our paed's office. we got to chatting, and she asked how asher was doing... so i naively told her. "k, i'll book him for this afternoon."

what?? no!! i was just making chit-chat!! aw, man! i really didn't think he needed to be seen... but, i booked the appointment, anyway. (post title)

cut to 4:50pm. we're at our appointment.

doc listens to asher's lungs and... yeah... they're still wet and crackly sounding (despite the chest xray that looked clear last week), and he's wheezing. still. this has all be going on for about a month, now, and it's not getting better (which viral bronch would do on its own by now). so doc muses, "maybe it's something else... either way, i'm not comfortable treating this wheeze, so i'm gonna send him to respirology. they can deal with that wheeze."

(ventalin causes the patient's heart rate to go up. way up. so, um... yeah... respirology, it is.)

then doc and i were discussing the reflux issue, as well. see, asher used to have severe GERD. it led to failure to thrive (FTT - poor thing was so malnourished... hence the GJ-tube) and could have killed him a number of times due to his open airway. but! his vagus nerve healed and his heart function improved and so the reflux went away.

but it's back now. with a vengeance. almost seems to be trying to make up for lost time. asher had been on ranitidine (zantac?) for a while, but it stopped working (which can happen, and actually happened when he was a baby), so doc put him on lansoprazole (prevacid fastabs). in the meantime, however, we should probably figure out why he's refluxing again, since cardio has ruled out the heart as the cause (see this post if you don't understand the correlation). once we figure that out, we can treat it all more effectively.

cardio mentioned last week that we should probably see gastro again about all the reflux, but i was so thrown by her choice of words that i didn't catch if she would be referring us or if paeds was supposed to. so i mentioned this to doc yesterday, so she's going to send in the referral.

and so it goes. puffy eyes and chit-chat turn into two more specialists for the littlest man. this will bring our count up to 10:

• paediatrics
• cardio (london)
• cardio (toronto)
• heart surgery
• pacemaker tech (not a doc, but specializes in the machine that makes asher's heart beat, so she counts, haha)
• nephrology
• neurology
• immunology
• gastroenterology
• respirology

sure, there are kids out there with longer lists. but then again... my other kids only have 1 doc. so nine docs and a tech is a lot. on the other hand... um... asher's alive, so i'm gonna count this as a good thing. :)

so there you have it. yesterday. quite a day, if you ask me.