School has started and Cameron is now in 4th grade! He also started at a new school! The kids were tested in 3rd grade and Cameron was selected to attend the GATE program (gifted and talented education). This means he would move to another school in the county (which is actually closer than his other school!) and would be in a classroom consisting of other children who also tested into the program. I was surprised to find there are only 15 children in the class and only 6 boys. He seems to like being in the new school and has made friends. He likes his teachers so that's always a plus.
First day of school picture:
So, where do we stand with arthritis? Well... things got crazy in the summer. He was vomiting EVERY Saturday for about 7-8 weeks. He also started complaining about the injection hurting. It took a while, but I figured out the vomiting was from the zofran he was taking... yes, zofran is supposed to STOP vomiting and nausea... but he vomited almost immediately after taking it. We stopped the zofran and he stopped vomiting!
I also figured out the pain with the shots. The pharmacy told us the methotrexate we had been getting that comes in a 2ml vial WITH preservative was on back order and they could not get it. They gave us a different vial WITHOUT preservative. We used this for a total of 8 weeks. During that time, he would complain more and more of it hurting when he got the shots. It got so bad that he would almost hide from me when it was time to take his shot. I tried all kinds of different things to make it better. I was talking to someone I met online who is an adult living with arthritis and she was the one to tell me that the one WITHOUT preservative stings like crazy! If you remember, when we first started the injections, we got the Enbrel with preservative and it was the one that hurt. So now, we have to get Enbrel WITHOUT and Methotrexate WITH preservatives.... confused yet?
We had a pretty lazy summer. The biggest news is that we got Cameron a dog! Her name is Margie and we brought her home July 25th. She is wonderful! He plays and runs with her in the yard almost daily! It is so nice to see him out and running.
I'll try to update more often. Thank you for taking time to keep up with us on our journey!
