Coasting…

October was a thin month in so far as updates on Jasmine’s eczema were concerned. Not a great deal has changed since the last update a couple of weeks ago. Her skin still seems to be on a roller-coaster ride of good and bad patches and the nights are still interupted and relatively restless.

Everyone is still suffering with a nasty cold. Jasmine has had hers for a full 3 weeks now and though her general demeanor isn’t massively effected she is still a snotty mess and her body must be tired of fighting this thing off. The odd observation is that her skin does improve when she is fighting something else off. The doctors dismiss this claiming the body is busy fighting something other than the eczema and thus doesn’t exhibit the body response typical of Jasmine’s various allergies/intolerances. The suspicious fact remains that she is still eating the same foods as before said illnesses, her bowel habits don’t appear massively different and the day to day activities are pretty much the same. So her body is still ‘coping’ with the diet just not ‘reacting’ …yet when it’s not busy with something else she’s a mess. It just doesn’t quite wash.

We’re still not sure if teething is involved. She’s had a few bouts of fever and despite our hesitancy we succumbed to using calpol to try and make our bundle of snot that little bit more comfortable.

We’ve a busy week ahead with meetings with our naturopath and the homeopath down in London. Maybe someone will be able to enlighten us.

Flaring :(

We’ve decided to re-introduce the bifido bacterium supplement in light of the fact that Jasmine’s skin has gotten progressively worse over the last week or so. Now, it could be one of the negative cycles, it could be teething, it’s probably a lot to do with her cold, but something certainly isn’t right. We’ve noticed that when not using the bifido supplement she passes solids very irregularly, i.e. occasionally a full 24 hours between stools. The ‘rings’ on her cheeks and thighs have shown no real sign of improvement since we started the Daktarin cream and if anything they could be a little worse. Jasmine is generally more itchy all over now, and we seem to have regressed a few months as to the itch vs skin condition. We didn’t use the Daktarin this morning for fear it could be making things worse.

Nights continue to be very hard work and she’s averaging 5 or 6 visits a night to resettle her. Mostly she resettles very well, though sometimes we feel the best thing for her is to join us in our bed.

I should also note the water softener eczema trial has come to a close and we had the softener removed last Friday, whether this may contribute to her poor skin I’m uncertain. There were no real improvements when we started, so unless any improvements were subtle over a long period of time it seems unlikely that the absence of the softener will make much difference.

All that being said, by the time Jasmine had been dropped off at the childminders her skin had improvement a thousand fold. I wonder if this’ll continue throughout the day or whether it’s just a chance occurrence.

Taking the plunge

We managed to get Jasmine a speedy appointment at the docs who were there usual helpful selves. One of the docs was a little inexperienced with dermatological complaints and called in the help of another, who happens to be one of the practice owners. His bedside manner is a little patronising and he plainly isn’t too fond of us given our pharmaceutical differences of opinion. He doesn’t believe Jasmine’s suspicious rings are anything other than discoid eczema, but we managed to get the to take a swab anyway.

We came away armed with some ‘Daktarin’ cream using the active ingredient: 20mg of miconazole nitrate (2%w/w). This is an antifungal cream. They had another brand but that one contained a steroid as well. I think we’ll trial it on her inner thigh ‘rings’ to start to make sure there are no nasty surprises. I’m too suspicious of pharmaceuticals.

Who knows, we might actually get a night of uninterrupted sleep…

>edit<

We decided to go all out and use the cream on her face aswell. We also made sure to send her neenuus, bed linen and anything else she may have rubbed her face on for a good wash. Here's hoping!….

Ringworm?

Over our journey with Jasmine’s skin I have occasionally found myself doing a double take and focus a little closer on the blemishes on her skin. I’ve never had personal experience with ringworm but a little investigation doesn’t rule it out.

- Sometimes the patternations on her can be very similar to other examples of confirmed ringworm.
- Apparently ringworm and eczema are commonly found together.
- Her skin is generally good (bar the creases) yet these ‘rings’ persist.

I’ve not yet managed to get her into the Docs to confirm one way or the other but the evidence is fairly suggestive.

Bar her creases and a couple of similar rings on her inner thighs, the ‘eczema’ on her face is all that remains.

A better shot with a sleepy monkey:

A close-up of the ‘ring’ near her chin.

Curiouser and curiouser!

Bring on the colds…

It’s been a pretty crumby week so far. Jasmine’s skin has remained fairly stable but her night routine is shot through. She seems to be waking very regularly, enough to trigger calming visits. We were tempted to blame it on teething as she’s started putting everything in her mouth for a good chew.

She’s also just landed her first cold of the season so she’s a little worse for wear, bunged up and teary eyed. She does sound very cute though trying to speak with a bunged up nose.

Part of the weekends activities was to get the paints and sponges out. Jasmine adores painting and clearly thought that painting her own legs, arms and face was considerably more fun than sponging the paper! Steph did some great examples of sponging in the hope that Jasmine would follow suit, but she is just far too stubborn! She’s quite happy to demonstrate that she’ll do what she wants to do, in the way that she wants to do it. We’ve even gotten to the stage where she’ll throw herself on the floor in the classic tantrum pose! Evidently getting an early start on the ‘terrible twos’

BEFORE

AFTER

For the last week or so we’ve stopped her bifidofilus bacterium supplement as a test, but this doesn’t seemed to have made her nights any easier. She is however, going to bed very easily at the moment. After her bath, it’s the usual cream and dressing into PJ’s followed by a quick story (we’re trying to squeeze in brushing teeth here as well). After her story we turn her light out, give her a cuddle, put her in her cot and pull the duvet up, tucking it around her. She often says ‘night night’ to which we respond the same and we beat a hasty retreat. It’s amazing! After a year and a half of a bedtime routine taking up to an hour AFTER she’s completely ready for bed, this new technique is beautiful. It is also entirely her choice!

Almost good…

The week started off pretty good with Jasmine taking fairly well to her potato-less diet. Steph is doing pretty well with the cooking but it’s getting harder and harder to find recipes considering the amount of food she can’t eat! I think soon enough we’re going to have to introduce some food categories (i.e. gluten) to challenge her body. I believe it could be the only sure fire way of determining whether she truly has issues.

Off the potatoes Jasmine seems to be less windy and her skin showed signs of improvement. Her bowel movements are a little irregular but I’m guessing that’ll stabilise over time. She managed a couple of good nights throughout the week, even going through for an uninterrupted 11.5 hours! The last 2 nights however have returned to her old ways with 5 or so trips in to try and settle her. Sometimes it’s been wind related but generally nothing seems to be wrong. She draws immediate comfort from being picked up and cuddled and is soon asleep on the shoulder. She only seems to start up again once we try to leave after she’s been put down again. Last night she ended up in bed with us. Maybe it’s just a particularly anxious phase in her development, I don’t know. For all I know it could be last night’s full moon having an effect!!! >.<

Her skin has also taken a turn for the worst as well. She doesn't seem to be as itchy as she used to be, but there is definite flaring on her face, lower back and reoccurrence on her inner thighs. The creases on her knees, ankles and wrists always remained stubbornly red. We don't think this latest flare is anything out of the ordinary, instead we believe it is just continuance of the waves of recovery. We can only hope that the bad waves will get shorter where the good ones grow!

Nightshades…

We had an appointment with our naturopath a day after landing back in the UK. We were still all feeling 3 paces sideways but generally everything was on the road back to normality.

Before we had left for Brazil we had sent off a sample of Jasmine’s hair to check her arsenic levels in light of the large volume of rice related foodstuff she consumes. The results are very interesting indeed. It turns out that Jasmine has some high levels of toxic minerals namely arsenic, mercury and aluminum. This is a little worrying but is interestingly linked with a particularly low level of a crucial Nutrient mineral: Selenium. Selenium has been flagged as being crucial in the removal/processing of toxic minerals in the body. It is also crucial in the maintenance of skin in a similar way to vitamin E.

We were just expecting an arsenic level test but the results were substantially more thorough. Jasmine has a slow metabolism with a tendency towards decreased thyroid and adrenal function (reduced secretion of hormones). Our report states: “This is often due to a decrease in the body’s efficiency in utilising many of the nutrients found in the foods that are consumed, or it may be the result of an improper diet which does not provide the necessary nutrients to begin with.”

Following further discussion of the results are naturopath mentioned the term nightshades whilst we were suggesting Jasmine had issues with tomatoes. It turns out that this is a collective name for a group of plants including tomatoes, potatoes, peppers and aubergines (egg plant). We had only hours before decided that the common denominator for the flare during our second week in Brazil was potato. This combined with our suspicions about tomato and confirmation that they share a ‘family’ by the naturopath was VERY enlightening. Further research suggests that children with eczema can find that avoiding nightshades can be very beneficial, something that neither of us had come across in all of our research into ezcema!!!

blurb on nightshades

We had decided to stop potato in Jasmine diet the day we left Brazil, and she last had potato for lunch on Monday 21st September and her skin has shown gradual improvement since. We had a slight flare 3 days ago and we suspect that celery could be the cause, that and the fact that we now have to vet all her food for potato derivatives. Interstingly potato in used in the acidophilus bacterium supplement we were adding to her milk. We had BIG issues when we first added this to her diet, so much so that we had to abstain for a while and substantially cut the dose.

We have since stopped the acidophilus based on the potato content. We’ve had to source a new vitamin supplement as well as our original also contained potato. She is currently not half as itchy as usual and for the last 3 mornings has given us a lie in! We plan to flight her high level of toxicity with a multivitamin supplement which will increase her levels of selenium allowing her body to sort out everything else (in theory). The report also suggested adding some methionine rich foods (turkey & sirloin [amongst others]) as “this essential amino acid supplies sulfur to the cells for the activation of enzymes and energy metabolism. Sulfur is also involved in the detoxification process where toxic substances combine with sulfur, converting to a nontoxic form and are then excreted.”

We’re very early days but the potential for improvement following the removal of tomato and potato is quite staggering. Clearly potato made up a large part of her diet in her inability to eat wheat/dairy based foods so we’ve had to source alternatives there too. It seems swede and turnip have leapt to the rescue and even though we have to process tonnes of them to get enough for her meals Jasmine seems to love them!!

There is apparently light at the end of the tunnel…

Gabriel’s

After some creative stuffing of luggage into Gabriel’s car we were soon on the way to his apartment. It was still in Rio but was some distance away nestling up to Rio’s lagoon.

Gabriel and his wife Eliane had gone to great lengths to childproof the apartment, taking care to move the more delicate things waaaaay out of reach. The views from the balcony were stunning, overlooking the lagoon with Corcovado and more of mountainous Rio in the distance. The apartment was on the 3rd habitable floor but this was technically 7 floors up as the 1st was a childrens play floor and the following 3 were car parking accessed by a car lift! I’d never even heard of a car lift before.

We soon got down to playing tourist and arranged for visits to Sugar Loaf mountain, the Botanical Gardens, Corcovado (The Christ) and of course: the beach Gabriel generously volunteered to act as our driver and tour guide for which we were incredibly grateful.

As was our tradition so far in Brazil, we continued to eat gluttonous amounts of food, though this should be forgiven as the quality was amazing and would otherwise have been wasteful Gabriel and Eliane took us to some of their favourite restaurants and we thankfully still had to cover of Adriana in the evenings allowing us to escape.

Unfortunately Jasmine’s skin continued to decline. We noticed that with seemingly every meal she was flaring around her lips, adding ever more blemishes to her cheeks and around her eyes. We tried stopping the meat, then certain vegetables, taking this out and trying that etc… nothing seem to provide relief and Jasmine’s night routines became more tiresome accordingly. She of course put on a brave face and could easily be distracted by the helicopters and boats zipping around the lagoon.

Gabriel being the doting grandfatherly figure generously bought Jasmine a beautiful dress and coat. We are saving for their debut for over the Christmas holiday and it was far too hot to wear in Brazil. Jasmine was also on the receiving end of many toys and books and DVD’s. Anyone would think she was quite spoilt! We had some upsetting family news whilst staying with Gabriel but I shall save that tale to be told by another.

Our holiday came to a close in a dramatic packing spree utilising some creative luggage antics. We had spent 2 glorious weeks in lovely company, culminating in a luxurious break at Gabriel and Eliane’s, who make marvelous hosts and unfortunately great friends. =]

…the whole trip was only ever-so-slightly marred by the journey home. I really don’t recommend a late night, 11 hour flight for an itchy toddler. I’m not sure the Australian backpackers sitting around us appreciated the angry cries of a Jasmine who was clearly well past over-tired and was fast developing a cold ….priceless.

Jasmine wanted a bath :D

Chilling to her new DVD’s

Learning to like showers :D

a car lift!

She kept her hat on for almost 5 minutes

The view from Gabriel’s balcony

Helping to suncream her nose

In the pool at the club

the train to Corcovado (Christ)

Gabriel up on high

mummy up on high

very religious

trying to climb out the train

Cheese :D

Loving her new DVD’s

other kids things are far more interesting

stealing someones bike at the park

Ducks :D

Jasmine :D

Rio 2009 =]

daddy annoying Jasmine

she wanted to run into the sea

yay for waves

Tassells!

poser ;)

Reins for the return trip!

Another glorious sunset

She loved the swivel chair

Jasmine was lucky with toys =]

cheese

awwww

more daddy playing

HULK!

Jasmine clearly loving the botanical gardens

posing =]

more at the gardens

The Christ is behind that cloud on the hill …honestly!

She was fascinated with these leaves

botanical gardens

a leaf!

Jasmine liked to make long distance calls

cheese

fun with a straw :D

Rio

making friends =]

erm …we forgot a swim nappy…

weeeeeee

very arty

keeping it calm with sweetcorn rings!

proof we were there :D

cheese

Gabriel guarding the luggage on the Corcovado train

Awwww

Beautiful sunset

Jasmine showing off her armbands

more playing

daddy playing with his camera

watching the turtles at the botanical gardens

faster…!

cheese

awww sleepy

Jasmine like the cable car (skybus)

monkeys at sugar loaf

fun in the sand

Petropolis

For the weekend we had chosen to travel into the mountains to Petropolis where the family have a lovely retreat. Typically the weather is cooler and wetter but we were blessed with slightly unusual glorious sunny weather.

Jasmine soon made herself at home riding the wooden lion in the hallway and running about the house. We were joined by Jasmine’s 2nd cousins ensuring a full house with plenty of activity including Steph getting stuck climbing the waterfall (no water yet), lots of swimming pool antics, munching on raw sugar cane, running around like crazy things, games of croquet, games of beachball football and slightly more relaxed games for the older members of the family in the evenings.

We seemed to have a developing trend for eating lots and a trip to the mountain retreat didn’t prevent us from continuing this trend. We had taken some of Jasmine’s meals with us to cover the first couple but needed to cook up the remainder. This is where we first noticed Jasmine having a flare. It was clearly something she had eaten as it was surrounding her lips and caused blotches on her cheeks. We immediately began pointing blame at new vegetables, perhaps it was the chicken, maybe there was a contaminant etc… Almost 2 weeks later as I am writing this I think we have understood what the cause was but I will elaborate in the post covering her visit to the naturopath on our return to the UK.

4 years ago I was so badly sunburnt I spent 3 nights awake, unable to sleep for the pain. I vowed I would never again underestimate the sun in Brazil. I failed. Miserably. I spent a couple of hours in and around the pool which was clearly more than my skin can handle. I didn’t burn myself as badly as 4 years ago but enough to warrant calling myself an idiot! Thankfully we were much more sensible with Jasmine who was suitably creamed up for her pool related adventures

Generally speaking Jasmine was coping very well with the heat. We were a little worried about mosquitoes in the mountains but came prepared with a funky mosquito net large enough to wrap around her entire cotbed. The only issue was that it was that Jasmine found it far to interesting if she watched it being pulled over requiring us to wait until she was sufficiently sleepy before we covered her up.

All in all it was a glorious break in the mountains and with the exception of Jasmine’s minor flare everyone had had fun. All that remained was to head back to Tia My’s apartment to pack everything up to head over to Gabriel’s apartment.

Silly hats

ooo pretty dress (and mosquito net cotbed) :D

taking Maria for a walk

Cheese

Jasmine stole the tenis balls

she’s good at croquet

no grown-ups allowed…

Maria helping with Jasmine’s shoes

More cheese =]

Maria and Gabi

Little-uns and Adriana

Claudio reading the girls a story

Praying Mantis in the house :D

Little-uns

The veggie patch

Splish splash

mummy trying to play catch

She stole my chair :(

The view from the pool

Eating raw sugar cane, yummy!

mummy almost getting stuck

waterfall ….without water atm ;)

The retreat

almost down again …safely

squeeeeze

Mummy sunbathing

the flare

now that’s a good look!

Riding the lion :D

daddy shut mummy’s thumb in the car door >.< …oops

Tia My’s

We arrived at Tia My’s (Jasmine’s great aunt) in a flurry of suitcases. After farewell hugs to Gabriel and his family we crammed into the lift and shot off to the apartment. Jasmine was still out cold at this point and was dutifully placed in the centre of out bed (as we had yet to unpack hers) and mum and dad collapsed down for a little dinner. A short while later we all followed Jasmine’s fine example and gave in to sleepiness.

Jasmine spent the next day acclimatising to the new apartment. There was considerably more open space than she was used to in our house, making it also very suitable to playing hide and seek Her skin was a little worse for wear after the flight but was showing signs of a calming down. Auntie had generously provided us with a nanny as a gift during our stay in Brazil, we’re so unaccustomed to domestic help and were a little unsure at first but seeing how well Jasmine took to Adriana (the nanny) allayed any hesitancy we had.

We congregated in the kitchen to discuss Jasmine’s various dietary requirements, explaining her restrictive diet and how we believe this will ultimately lead her to the road to recovery. The cook added her own knowledge based on a lifetime of cooking for which we are very grateful. She suggested removing tomatoes, garlic and onions from Jasmine’s meals aswell as the usual suspects. The meals instead we’re all very basic, but the tastes were pleasant enough using just olive oil to cook the meats and a good helping of salt for the veggies (they use alot of salt in Brazil). So to start with we used a combination of pasta and rice dishes with a selection of vegetables (broccoli, carrots and marrow) and some shredded chicken or beef. Desserts were the typical pieces of fruit, particularly apples, pears and bananas. In Brazil they have a tiny banana that is incredibly sweet. It’s great! Jasmine had loads. We ended up dropping her cereal in the morning as she kept turning up her nose to it. Instead we used fruit to supplement the morning rice milk.

As the pro-biotic supplements that we add to Jasmine’s milk need to be kept refrigerated we had decided to leave them at home. We had bought another brand in sachets though never got around to adding them into her milk. Gabriel was a star and managed to source some rice milk for us as this is by no means a common item in Brazil and had arranged for a few cartons to be delivered ahead of our arrival at aunties.

A couple of meals later and following another good sleep her skin was looking amazing. There were still blemishes here and there but the difference in such a short time was staggering. Hopefully I’ll be able to highlight this a little later in the charts I plan to produce showing the fluctuations in her skin and itch habits. Her seemed to have recovered just in time for her baptism that was to take place on our second day in Brazil at the same beautiful little church mummy and daddy were married in.

The baptism went without hitch and she looked amazing in her little white dress. She was a little shy in front of all the family to start with but soon settled down into her usual swing of things. There were no tears at all throughout the entire event. She watched curiously as the priest played with the water before pouring it over her head. I had thought she would fight it, but she was very calm and generally wasn’t fazed at having her hair slicked. It was fairly warm so she probably appreciated the cool water! I think that our secret weapon of sweetcorn ring crisps went a long way towards keeping her distracted sufficiently long enough to last through the entire ceremony without a hitch!!. She soon bonded with the other younger members of the family and seemed fascinated with Gabi (cousin and Godfather), resulting in her chasing him around and shouting his name repeatedly at the post baptism meal back at auntie’s.

Over the next couple of days Jasmine’s skin continued to improve, with only the creases of her ankles, back of knees and wrists showing any real sign of resilience. We took the opportunity to have her running around more in her nappy, in short tops, in dresses without leggings, generally taking advantage of the fact that she was less itchy and much more comfortable with her own exposed skin.

Jasmine’s first piano lesson with Tia My

Falling asleep to twinkle twinkle little star :D

Jasmine telling Adriana what she likes to eat

Can’t beat colouring in

pre baptidm slouch

trying not to get her white dress mucky….

Chilling with the Godfathers, Gabi and Patrick

Pretty thing!

Chatting with Uncle Flavio

A rare nappy only experience =]

Posing!

Family

Cheese

More family :D

The Godparents

Steffen Luring Jasmine with crisps

Scaring mummy on the balcony ;)

Mum and Dad’s night off :D

The church

Crisps keeping her calm!

Jasmine paying lots of attention…

Post-dunking

a success!

more family =]

Steffen, Jasmine and Patrick

Steffen trying to steal Jasmine’s crisps

Young’uns

Family-tastic

Butter wouldn’t melt!

The infactuation begins…

Doggy goes everywhere!

Wellies clearly suit the dress better =]

More piano lessons :D

Right hand view from the balcony (The Christ)

left hand view from the balcony (Sugar loaf mountain)

Peekaboo

loving the see-saw

some wierd duck-turkey

fascintated by the ‘eligopta’

ooo whats that…

more see-saw fun

See-saw malfunction

a pensive pose

a moment out

cheeky!

Jasmine said.. “Miaow” ….it was a pug. lol

neenu chasing!

Winner!

so cute

taking Igglepiggle for a ride

ooo lego!

Blowing bubbles :D