To sleep, perchance to dream

Another night of interrupted sleep, another day of hiding yawns and thinking of a nap! Normally the cause is the occasional bout of night sweats or the more frequent waking up in the middle of the night and not being able to get back to sleep. But not last night, or rather, early this morning. This morning at 3:45 my cell phone rings and I know instantly that it has to be Charles. Which means that he's having troubles again with his "funny feelings" in his head that preclude full blown episodes of violence. Luckily this time he woke up before it had reached the full-blown stage, so a dose of antihistamine, some talk about how he was feeling, how long he had been awake and how long he had been asleep prior to awakening, and then he went back to sleep. But I didn't! I was wide-awake from then until Bill's alarm went off at 6. And only then did I begin to doze off for a few minutes before I had to get up and made Bill's breakfast.

I had been worried about the possibility of Charles having another episode. Sunday we went over to Kat's and mowed her lawn. Bill got into the kudzu on the edge of the property with the weedeater and had Charles go behind him with the push mower. Unfortunately, Charles found a bee's nest and got stung on his legs several times. He seemed fine yesterday, but still, I wasn't surprised when that phone rang this morning. The episodes seem to hit when his immune system is working hard to overcome illness and so I thought bee stings have the same effect as a fever.

May 26th was the last time Charles needed the antihistamine to ward of an episode, so it's been less than two months. Prior to that he went just about three months. I had hoped that the time between would have lengthened, not shortened. That would have fed my hope that this whole nightmare would just eventually fade away, that his body would recover on his own from the tetanus vaccination. But it doesn't appear as though that is happening. Time to make that appointment with the naturopath, since both his pediatrician and the neurologist he was referred to were not able to find anything wrong. And I'm hoping that the pediatrician will agree with me that David doesn't need a tetanus vaccination for his college physical. The college indicated that they might accept a letter of medical waiver from the doctor. I've got to double check next week when the person in charge at the college's health department is back from vacation. But I am very leery of unnecessarily exposing another child to that vaccination! It certainly has wreaked havoc upon Charles' body.