Clive's "Condition"

Ok, so let me start this by making one thing perfectly clear: Clive is just fine. He's the same full-on, non-stop toddler he's been. He just has a "condition".

But let me back up a week or three...

The first weekend of my prac saw Clive with a bit of a cold. This is not unusual given he's goes to child care (full time when I was in prac) as well as having two siblings at home who attend school. He gets every sniffle Sparky and Her Majesty bring home, as well as contributing to the family sickness pool himself. But by the time I got home from work that Saturday night, it was pretty obvious he was not well. By "not well" I mean really not well. Trip to the hospital not well.

Clive and I spent the next 17 hours in hospital Emergency Wards - a couple of hours in the local private hospital getting him improved enough to get an ambulance (minus the sirens) to the Royal Children's Hospital. He was still not 100% when we were discharged Sunday afternoon, but he was so exhausted, and so not sleeping, that he was not doing himself any favours and I promised I would bring him back if he worsened at home. Thankfully I haven't had to do that.

So I was hopeful this incident was a one-off. A very severe complication from the virus he obviously had. However a follow-up visit to our GP a week and a half later put paid to that notion. Various test results had come back that meant it was pretty likely Clive had been having problems for a while, and we had all totally missed it. I felt pretty awful about that - hello, nurse here! - but the GP reassured me that given Clive's age he's a pretty poor historian and he'd obviously been coping prior to that weekend. Since that appointment he's had several other episodes that have pretty well convinced The Hermit and I that Clive does indeed have a "condition".

Why don't I just get on with it and tell you what it is then? Because The Hermit has asked me not to. He has asked me not to violate Clive's privacy and put it out there for everyone and their cousin to see on the interwebs, and since he's never asked me to leave anything out on this blog - even stuff that makes him look like a wanker - I agreed. If you're a long time reader and desperately want to know, I'll tell you. Just email me at aussiemooselet AT gmail DOT com (just substitute the appropriate symbols) or Facebook me and I'll give you the scoop. We're not embarrassed or ashamed or think that our son is less than perfect - that's ridiculous and as far as I'm concerned he's still perfect. He just has a chronic condition that we'll have to learn to manage - and he may even outgrow it.

As I said at the start, he's fine. It hasn't slowed him down one jot, and he's a champ at taking his medication when necessary. But it was a hell of a way to start my final prac.