Tough Love

I was really torn about returning back to work last week. Although Kourtney's blood work improved remarkably and there were so many positive signs that she was on the road to recovery, the one person who has to be convinced that she is better is Kourtney. One of the keys to Kourtney's recovery was getting her pain under control. We believe that she has had an incredible amount of pain for years. The pain medication does not take her pain away but changes the perception of her pain. So once again there is a fine line between too little or too much. Over the past two months we have kept her pain well managed in order for her to heal, which results in her being a bit more sedated. The last few weeks she has not required extra pain medication except after dressing changes and she has been lucid and awake during the day.

The pain medication has helped ease Kourtney's anticipatory pain before a dressing change because she knows it is not going to hurt as much, but the one fear we have not conquered is our stairs. Kourtney's feet and knees have been so painful that going up and down the stairs has caused considerable distress. We haven't pushed her very much to go out of the house, but after knowing her blood work was good, we felt we could encourage her to go down the stairs and get out of the house. I returned back to work only a few days after we got the blood work results, and much to my disappointment Kourtney came up with many excuses not to leave the house. The biggest one was that she was in too much pain, then she got extra pain medication, she would be sleepy and not feel well enough to leave the house. I then had "the talk" that only a mom could have (everyone else would feel heartless). I told her she had to face her pain, not to give into it. It fell on deaf ears, as Kourtney lamented that nobody believed that she was having pain.

Wednesday morning, I was adamant that Kourtney had to leave the house after the dressing change. I woke up only to find the following YouTube video. I showed it to Kourtney.



 Kourtney rolled her eyes when he talked about his parents being his "heroes", and was visibly angry that I would show her this.  ( I don't think you can ever expect to liked as a parent to a teen.)  The dressing change went smoothly, and Kourtney started complaining about pain. Thankfully I was able to be confident that her skin was looking good and told her the best thing for her to do was to get out of the house.  (This was truly one of the most difficult things that I had to do because honestly I have no idea how much pain she had but I had to show some tough love.)  I left her in the capable hands of Meaghan and  I went out for a walk. Upon my return, Kourtney and Meaghan were gone. She LEFT THE BUILDING!!! After a few hours she returned  and I had my happy, pain free, bubbly teenager back. What a huge gamble, but it worked.

Now we just have to get her out of the house every day, so she can get back to school for the new semester.