Thursday, December 14, 2006

The Itchy Foot

Last night was absolutely brutal. Quinn woke up around 11:30 PM and made his way into the bathroom. I found him still in the bathroom on the floor five minutes later scratching his foot like mad. I couldn't get anything out of him except for that his foot was itching. I finally got him back in bed, and from then until about 4:30 he was waking up and calling out every five to ten minutes complaining that he couldn't sleep because his foot was itching (between two and four he was going for stretches of 10 to 20 minutes, but still calling out eventually). I tried a bunch of different stuff, we put anti-itch cream on his foot, I washed his foot, I put a cold pack on it, I even tried massaging it. Nothing seemed to work long term since within ten to fifteen minutes he would be calling out and waking me up again. Finally around 4:30 AM I gave him some Benadryl, which is usually a dicey move since he hates the way it tastes and will most times throw up after taking it. But by 4:30 AM I was willing to risk it. On the positive side he didn't throw up. Then I just had to hang out for the twenty minutes until it kicked in and he was able to go to sleep before I could head back to bed myself. Needless to say I didn't get a whole lot of sleep last night. And Quinn was in none too good a mood when he got up and had to go to school since he missed out on several hours of sleep himself. I actually thought he shouldn't go since he was so tired, but Ginger said he good. This evening he seems to have developed a really nasty cough and a mild fever. I'm thinking the lack of sleep threw his immune system out of whack and he's now got some cold or something he was probably carrying around before. Would it be too much to ask for a week to go by in this house without someone being sick?

Ginger called the pediatrician in the morning after the debacle with Quinn's foot since we didn't see a rash or anything on his foot during the night (or the next morning) that would explaiun why it was itching that much. The doctor's office just claimed it was merely growing pains. I don't know if I buy that explanation or not though. Throbbing pain in the knees or thighs I could believe would be growing pains, but this was itching on the heel of his foot. I don't know, but whatever it was I'm really hoping it was a one night deal.


This morning I got up later than normal (since I was up a lot during the night), and when I looked outside there was this dense fog outside. It was really thick and some fog was actually coming up from the ground and billowing over my deck as if the Ice Capades had set up shop under the deck and were dropping tons of dry ice into buckets. I quickly ran and got my camera went outside, and in the 30 seconds it took me to get the camera and get outside, the moment was gone. There was still some fog out there, but nowhere near as thick and billowing as it had been a mere minute earlier.


We've been looking at switching phone services. The idea is to switch to a pay as you go plan since we don't use the phones that often. Right now the Amp'd stuff is looking really nice in that you only pay for your minutes and it's only $.10 a minute. The part I find hard to believe is there's no monthly fee associated with the plan (or lack of a plan). It seems odd to me they would let you have a phone sitting on the network and not make you pay for that except for when you actually made use of the network. Seems like they would be charging you for the ability to access the network somewhere in there. Anyone out there actually have that service and know how it works?

5 comments:

Scott said...

First of all, sorry to hear about the rough night. I have had occasions like that where my foot itched, and it woke me out of bed with the scratching. Don't know what it is, but it's definitely NOT growing pains in my case. I think that's a load of rubbish.

Second, if he throws up on the Benadryl, you should get some of the new tongue strips that dissolve on the tongue. They're exactly the same as those breath strips that were popular a little while back. It's a full dose of Benadryl on a pretty easily dissolving strip.

Finally, on the cell-phone thing: I've had the pay-as-you-go plan, but I used Tracfone. It was horrible. On the surface, it sounded good, but to keep the phone active, you'd have to buy minutes for it every so often. They had this additional service that you could pay $8 a month for called "Deactivation Protection" which kept you from getting deactivated if you decided not to buy more minutes month to month. This service was outsourced to another company. Basically, long story short, the left hand couldn't talk to the right, and after the second time of having our phones deactivated, reactivated, numbers changed, two hour customer service phone calls suffered through... we quit. Just not worth the trouble.

Scott said...

Jeez, I wrote a friggin' book! Sorry about that.

gaz said...

man, you're as bad as we are for illness at the mo. the heel... hmmm... could be that he landed on it hard during the day and it only started to tingle and annoy him when he was resting it up! kind of a minor athlete's injury. i've woken up in a morning and had a really bad case of pins and needles that lasted nearly all morning, limping around like long john silver!
do you get calpol over there, that's wicked stuff - it's an incredible cure for pain, fever and insomnia *and* it tastes gorgeous.
nice pics btw. i love your 'back yard'. how far back does that thing go?

JamesF said...

Scott: but it's definitely NOT growing pains in my case. I think that's a load of rubbish.

I tend to agree.

Scott: get some of the new tongue strips that dissolve on the tongue.

Didn't know that was an option. I've never seent hem for Benadryl but will be on the lookout for them now.

Gaz: man, you're as bad as we are for illness at the mo.

I wouldn't go that far, after reading about the trouble with you and little guy I think we have it pretty easy to be honest.

Gaz: do you get calpol over there,

Don't know, I'll have to look into it.

Gaz: i love your 'back yard'. how far back does that thing go?

The part we own probably only goes back about 20 yards or so. The rest is common area wetlands (in theory it shouldn't get developed). The common area runs perpendicular to our house and I would say is at least a couple hundred yards wide (in the winter since there are no leaves you can actually see houses on the other side of the common area through the woods).

sattvicwarrior said...

beautiful pics of the wooded area. very haunting. mystical. . thanks for sharing