Thursday, May 05, 2005

Correlation, Causation, or Coincidence

  • April 2004: We travel to visit my parents. Ellie gets her first cold (it lasts over a month)
  • July 2004: We travel to two family reunions. Ellie gets her second cold (it lasts 2 months)
  • January 2005: Ellie starts school. She's healthy.
  • February 2005: We go to New Orleans. Ellie gets a bad cold.
  • March 2005: We go to Dodge City. Ellie gets a GI bug that lands her in the hospital for rehydration
  • April 2005: We travel to visit Paul's parents. Ellie gets a rash/fever thing that's probably strep throat.
Sure there have been other trips that don't end in illness. But every one of Ellie's illnesses has been proceeded by travel. Often she gets sick while we're still far from home. Hmmm.

6 comments:

Unknown said...

I cannot speak about all Down's kids because honestly I only grew up with one. However, she is and has always been VERY susceptible to illness and gets colds that morph into other things, usually upper respiratory, and last much longer than they would for the rest of us. And as I understand it, it is because of her low immunity, something to do with her physiology?

ALso, when you're home you have YOUR germs, which because she lives there, she is immume to. When you teravel, she is introduced to new and exciting germs which she has not developed an immunity to. And if she at all has a compromised immune system, she is apt to catch things much more easily.

Yeah, I'd talk to the ped. about it, too, they're bound to have some insight.

Sarahlynn said...

I'll mark "Correlation, Causation, or Coincidence" down as an attempt to be light-hearted that utterly failed. :)

Chasmyn, yes, you're right that kids with Down syndrome tend to get a little sicker with various bugs than do other kids. (Not that they catch more stuff, but that sometimes they're more effected by what they do catch.) And you're also right that the stress of travel (and many new bugs available en route and at the destination) can make someone who's fighting off illness already extra suseptible.

Sarahlynn said...

Yay!

Unknown said...

I'm sorry, that happens to me all the time too. I post something that to me seems lighthearted and people think I am being serious. My bad, I feel as if because I do that as well and get the same kinds of responses that I should have seen the humour.

I'll see it next time, I promise! lol

I also apologise for taking a shortcut in my speaking and saying "Down's kids" rather then "children with Down's
Syndrome". That was entirely my laziness in typing and not anything that I meant anything by. It hadn;t even occurred to me that it might be seen as offensive.

Again, all too many times things people have said inadvertently to me about Quinn had me have the same reaction. I feel that I therefore ought to just KNOW these things somehow. And yet, humanly, I don't. I apologise again for my mistake.

Never, ever have I intended for anything I said here or anywhere to be offensive. And I didn;t mean to imply that you somehow are not aware of your own child's immume system or anything else like that.

I only intended to relay my (minimal) experience and also my lack of knowledge. Like with the heart kids - kids that shared my son;s own heart defect - every case is different, therefore so difficult to say if some things are unique to each particular child or something that is a regular occurrance across the board with kids with the same heart issues.

Same with any medical issues, I suspect. I only know one girl with Down's Syndrome and because I do know that every case is different with different issues I only meant to say that in my minimal experience this is what SHE went through but I have no idea if this was a regular occurrance across the board.

I'm sorry I wasn't more clear and that what I said might have been offensive. I really never meant to misspeak like that.

Sarahlynn said...

Chasmyn, no worries! I wasn't at all offended by what you posted. And my above post was *not* directed at you.

Dreaming again said...

I got the humor in your post. I about spit my coffee out when I read it, but wasn't sure you meant it to be funny, so I didn't respond LOL To me, it was hilarious. But, I haven't been reading long enough to know if that was your being funny or your crying in frustration.

Both of my sons were born with a mild immune deficiency (hypogammagobulinemia in the oldest, IgG subclass 2 deficiency in the youngest, related, but slightly different in presentation)

Traveling was a guarentee sickness.
The other trigger ...holidays ... a flat out promise of an ER visit with a temp of 105 fever was a holiday. For the first 4 years of my parenting, we had not a single holiday that was not in the ER or hospital! (it's funny now, actually, by the 2nd year, we were laughing)
When my oldest was 4, and my youngest was 2, it was Christmas eve, not a single sign of illness coming on. We were ELATED.
Then ... my son jumped up & off the couch ..and BIT THROUGH HIS TONGUE ..clean through ...
off to the ER. Then the next day, blood clot in the tongue, back to the ER.
We were laughing, thankfully, the doctor's knew us ..and they were laughing with us.

It was one of those ..either you laugh or cry moments.

sorry to prattle on on your blog. Maybe I should go blog on my own blog (grin)