In Which Connor Feels Better After We Give Him Drugs (No Not That Kind)

Little Connor woke up this morning with both his eyes starting to swell up. We got him in for a doctor's appointment this evening, where they took a look at him, said "Yep! It's hives!" and sent us home with a big bottle of Benadryl. The child already looks tons better, and hopefully he'll sleep pretty well tonight as a side effect. That would make me very, very happy.

We're picking up our van on Saturday, and as an added bonus our respite care worker, who happens to be a medical massage therapist, is going to come over and give Jeremy a back massage and work on his feet and legs while Connor, my mother-in-law and I are out picking up the van. Then she's going to stay with Connor and Jer and I will go out on a date! I am so excited-- can't wait.

One of the things Jer's medical massage therapist will be focusing on is range-of-motion exercises. After not moving his feet at all for a month they've become really stiff, so we have exercises to do to make them more flexible again. We also have exercises to get the nerves reacquainted with being touched-- apparently after a while they get sort of hypersensitive, and then you have to work to calm them back down. It's sort of like your foot went to sleep for oh, forty days or so. The tingling is apparently rather intense. You also have to massage the feet to increase the circulation and get the swelling to go down. The physical therapist used the term "milking his toes." This is a bad term to use around me with my overly fertile imagination. I bet toe milk smells really funny.

Eww.

Anyway, Jer isn't able to reach good portions of his feet, so I'm doing the massages three times a day-- about twenty minutes at a time on each leg. While foot massages three times a day sounds pretty wonderful if you ask me, I assure you it's not very fun for all parties involved. At least, most of the foot massages I've had don't cause me to use quite such colorful language. As his feet slowly regain motion and the nerves settle down the massages should become less painful.

One good thing is coming out of this-- you use copious amounts of lotion during these exercises. A twenty minute lotion regime three times a day does a powerful amount of good for your skin. I don't think my hands have ever been so soft!

All the same, I don't think I will be adding this to my skin care regime on a permanent basis. If I had a skin care regime, that is. Oh well.

~Jess