I am so torn between having to work and caring for my sick daughter

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If she is sick, she needs to be in her room in bed with no screens, resting. She can have a book with her as she feels better. A glass of water and some saltines by her bedside and you can go work.

Why are you entertaining her to keep her away from screens? Hard no.

She is playing you so hard.

Exactly this.

+2

[Anonymous]

I’m surprised at your financial constraints given your husband is a dermatologist. And also his lack of medical knowledge, as that is a competitive field to get into, so would assume he’d have fair amount of intelligence/aptitude. I’m a physician but not a pediatrician but still had to be “pediatrician” to my kids a lot, ie antibiotics etc, and made it through.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So neither you nor your husband (a DOCTOR) have thought to investigate why she gets sick so often.

Neither her physician parent nor her pediatrician tried to establish a diagnoses or refer to a specialist. This happens so often, truly mind boggling.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m surprised at your financial constraints given your husband is a dermatologist. And also his lack of medical knowledge, as that is a competitive field to get into, so would assume he’d have fair amount of intelligence/aptitude. I’m a physician but not a pediatrician but still had to be “pediatrician” to my kids a lot, ie antibiotics etc, and made it through.

If he had college and med school debt and doing residency or new attending with a big mortgage, it's absolutely explainable.

As far as his lack of medical knowledge goes, most docs aren't jack of all trades. If they were, we wouldn't need different specialists.

[Anonymous]

Has she been evaluated by a mental health counselor? Even if it’s physiological, missing that much school could leave her feeling behind and socially on the outs, which can exacerbate physical symptoms, or perception of physical symptoms. It also sounds like you need to set boundaries. There is no world here in which the answer is quitting your job so your kid doesn’t have to go to school. Maybe you need to enroll her in online school so she can learn even when she doesn’t feel 100%. I’d talk to the school counselor about accommodations too. Maybe she can visit the counselor or nurse and take a break if she needs one, rather than avoid school completely. You are doing her no favors. And marriage counseling. It sounds like you don’t like or respect your husband, and your resentment may be interfering with your ability to adequately assess what’s going on with your daughter.

[Anonymous]

This feels like a troll

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Your kid has been sick every week since she was 18 months old?? That doesn’t even seem possible. I hope you have a lot of doctors involved in sorting out why your child has been sick for 11 years straight.

I wonder if OP lives near any allergy triggers. My friend had a son who was sick all the time and it stopped in middle school when they moved. Apparently, the golf course near their old home was causing him allergies

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Check her vitamin D levels

This. Check her for serum magnesium, vitamin D level, iron level. I had a nephew that doctors couldn't figure out what was wrong with him ( he had a terrible skin issues/itching all over his body). Dermatologists were prescribing him different medications but nothing worked. He couldn't even go to school. He landed in the hospital and they were giving him steroids. He was so miserable. Finally, there was one doctor in the hospital who finally figured out what was wrong with him, she did some specialized tests ( she took blood samples, stool samples etc. ); it turned out to be fungus, also his vitamin D was extremely low. It was in a different country, not USA. Slowly, my nephew started feeling better after this doctor prescribed special ointments for fungus, huge doses of vitamin D. My advice is, you need to figure it out with your child what is the cause. How is her diet? Does she eat a lot of sugar/processed food? Her gut bacteria might not be good then.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This feels like a troll

It sure does

[Anonymous]

OP here. Thanks, PPs, for sharing many good ideas about how to investigate my daughter's health situation. I posted here originally to vent about how my full-time work is not compatible with being there for a child who is often sick. But I got something so much more valuable out of this thread: I am ramping up the search for the causes of her illnesses.

For those who have asked: so far we have identified mold and dust mites as triggering allergens. We had to do extensive mold remediation in our home, and were hoping that this would solve the issues. The dust mites continue to be a problem, even though we keep our house clean.

We will also do tests for anything that might be toxic in the house. The closest golf course is around 2.5 miles away, so I don't think that pesticides from the lawn make their way to us in the air.

We will do a blood test for any current deficiencies, and test for immunoglobulin deficit, too.

[Anonymous]

Dermatology is the rare job that offers high pay with a good lifestyle. Your husband can certainly take time off (I’m sure his female colleagues do so when their kids are sick) or he can afford to pay out for a nanny. This is definitely a husband issue.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Check her vitamin D levels

This. Check her for serum magnesium, vitamin D level, iron level. I had a nephew that doctors couldn't figure out what was wrong with him ( he had a terrible skin issues/itching all over his body). Dermatologists were prescribing him different medications but nothing worked. He couldn't even go to school. He landed in the hospital and they were giving him steroids. He was so miserable. Finally, there was one doctor in the hospital who finally figured out what was wrong with him, she did some specialized tests ( she took blood samples, stool samples etc. ); it turned out to be fungus, also his vitamin D was extremely low. It was in a different country, not USA. Slowly, my nephew started feeling better after this doctor prescribed special ointments for fungus, huge doses of vitamin D. My advice is, you need to figure it out with your child what is the cause. How is her diet? Does she eat a lot of sugar/processed food? Her gut bacteria might not be good then.

The reason why I suggest it is that this was me. I was getting sick constantly. Since getting my vitamin D up, never got sick again during the height of flu season.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:She's 12. She doesn't need you to talk with her all day. Tell her "I have to work. You can listen to podcasts or do schoolwork so you're not behind. We can talk at 12:30 when I can take a half hour break for lunch."

+1

I WAH. When my 9 y/o was home sick this week, he napped, read books a bit when he felt well enough, and watched some movies. Yes he had some screen time, but I also didn’t drive myself nutty about not getting any work done.

By age 12, she should only really need you to make lunch and check in every so often with a poor baby and let me get you some more Tylenol.

[Anonymous]

I feel your situation so much OP! I understand your husband woes. I am not like some of the PPs who say your daughter should be self sufficient when she's sick and not "need" to chat etc. Yes, it's great if that's the case and that is the case for many kids. But it isn't for her and that's totally fine because kids can have totally varied emotional needs and still be normal.

[Anonymous]

Has she been to a good ent? She might need her adenoids removed. It helped a lot with our allergies prone kid. We also give him allergy meds Allegra most nights and nose spray. We basically do that as maintenance to prevent his getting flare ups that in our experience lead to more frequent infections. Sorry for your stress. I gave up my dream career and took a part time wfh job because we have three kids and the mom load is intense, so I get what you are saying. My husband never complained about that but we did buy a more modest house based on his salary alone. Just fyi teens (esp girls) can need a lot of parenting ages 14-18 so I wouldn’t count on leaning back into your career in that timeframe. I would frankly consider downsize the house to try to have less stress in everyone overall. Good luck.