Being Right Is Not As Great As You Think

Recently I have been on a quest to find the reason my youngest is tired all of the time. When I say youngest you may be envisioning a toddler toddling about but my youngest will actually be 20 in just a few short weeks. The truth is this tiredness and basically not feeling well has gone on for a long time. I would say most of her life.

Now before you start judging me as an inept parent let me just say that I have spent many hours visiting doctors and having her tested for a myriad of things. I have had several moments when I thought I was pretty darn close to the answer only to find I wasn’t. I had many times suggested to my daughter to take allergy medicine but the truth is parents are totally ignorant until the time comes that you are not. Those times usually involve an event that makes you undeniably right and your child has no other option but to tell you “You were right” with an ashamed face.

Just a couple of weeks ago my (“you were right”) moment arrived but honestly it didn’t matter because I was so happy to have some answers. I had decided to take my daughter to an allergist in hopes of crossing this possibility off the list. When we arrived and they started poking my girl with different allergens and testing her breathing my daughter was a little freaked out, but as her body started to react to the different allergens, getting red and itchy we knew we may have finally found the answers we had been hoping for.

It was a long arduous process but after almost 3 hours we learned that she was allergic too:

Dogs                                                                                                                                              

Horses

Cockroaches  (please note that we do not have cockroaches at our house)

Dust mites

Grass

Trees

All molds indoor and outdoor

So basically everything,  and then… just for fun they threw in the fact that she had asthma and was only breathing at 43%. No wonder she didn’t feel good! As a parent how do you come back from that bombshell? Seriously 20 years in and we are just now finding this out?

I myself had just been diagnosed as allergic to dogs and since we have two it’s a little tough to avoid them. Our dogs are suppose to be non allergic dogs which I shared with our doctor when he told me the news a few months ago and his comment was, “there is no such thing”.

So here we are pretty much bathing in allergens at our house. There is an old saying that knowledge is power, so now that we know what we are up against we are coming out with allergy meds a blazing and an inhaler so that breathing can continue. Honestly, it is so much better than anything else that might be found and just knowing what she is up against helps us help her.

Truly in the end I’m not happy I was right, I’m just happy we have an answer and hopefully we can turn things around for our youngest girl. So parents, the lesson here is, being right is not as great as you think. It is, knowing your child knows your right that really matters!