The teenage years scare me. He already acts pre-teeny. The giveaway is the answering back and the overuse of words like epic and awesome (pronounced awwwwwwsum). He makes me laugh so much, it's hard to get cross with him even when he is being cheeky. I imagine like a lot of kids his age, getting him to clean his teeth, hang up his coat, not have crap all over his bedroom floor and haribo stuck to the car window requires some nagging. But add onto that everything else he has to fit into his day, and it can feel some days like nag is all I do.
And yet, right now, his compliance with meds, nebulisers and physio is good. We have a zero tolerance policy on treatments, so he knows no amount of arguing will change the fact that he has to get on with it in the end. But what will he be like in a few years when you add in more homework, friends calling for him to come out, more medication, more physio, more nebulisers....?
Recently one of his nebulised drugs (a nebuliser is an electronic device that turns a liquid medication into a fine mist, better absorbed in the lungs) has been replaced by a super dooper dry powder inhaler, Colobreathe. We celebrated! Instead of 3 lots of nebs a day (10-20 mins each), for now he has just one, plus these inhalers twice a day. But the inhaler isn't quite as perfect as we had both hoped..... It is FOUL. It's like trying to breathe down salty, burning lumps of sticky powder. He has to extensively rinse and spit out after each breath, meaning we have to do it at the sink, and even then he manages to soak the fruit bowl, the eggs, and anything else in the area. Trying to get him to hold this down for the recommended 10 seconds is next to impossible. He really tries. But the older he gets, I worry he tries a tiny bit less. This morning he took mouse sized puffs, so we had to repeat again and again and again, until done. The old nebuliser might have been quicker (and better tasting). So I get on at him, he gets cross with me, I get on at him some more, and then we both laugh. We always end up laughing because I can never stay cross at him. We laugh about how yuck it is (I try it too, to try and prove I can hold it down longer than him.... I can't). But imagining how this and everything else might be a few years down the line... When he's a grumpy teen and we just have more to do?
Maybe I'll be blessed with a lovely, health conscious, polite, hard working and compliant teenager...... they do exist, right?
