– 1:23 pm
This eczema thing… It’s tough to call it. At one point, it was visibly more pronounced under both eyes and on the left side of your lip. But as of last night – I haven’t seen you today – everything seemed a lot better. Liza and I are pretty confident we’re dealing with allergies.
Well, how the fuck do we know? Great question. Liza got the intel from Maria, Nico’s mother. (You guys have hung out quite a bit.) Turns out, she is allergic to tomatoes, in a major way. She only has to look at them to display the same symptoms i.e. an outbreak of eczema on her face.
The night before yours went to town, you had your mits in my salad picking out raw tomatoes and stuffing your face with them. We could see the area around your mouth go red but thought nothing of it — business as usual. Well, shit. Looking back, being none the wiser, you’ve had tomatoes in almost every form, regularly in almost every meal. Tomatoes are pretty hard to avoid.
We should’ve known better though. Every time you had tomatoes, it showed up in your stool, undigested. That should’ve been a telltale sign. But unfortunately, your parents aren’t the smartest, are they? Also, tomato recipes were always incentivized. You love them.
So we think we have the cause pinned down (and reverted to giving you dairy products). However, we’re widening the list to include nightshade vegetables. According to the internet, that’s also a thing. When your skin settles, we’ll talk about giving you aubergines, potatoes etc. It’s unlikely we’ll give you tomatoes though. Not anytime soon.
In the build-up to this, we’d checked in with Maalouf for a medical opinion. Then, we were fighting something that looked like dandruff on your scalp. Nope, that was a fungal infection, to which he prescribed a (pretty strong) ointment to treat. We had to cut most of your hair off to administer it. It’s a bit premature but that now seems like a problem of the past.
The same appointment also uncovered an ear infection and a soar throat, which you didn’t tell us about. Tut tut tut! We also got antibiotics for those.
This morning, your mother and grandfather took you for a second opinion (since we weren’t getting anywhere with the rash). At this point, Dr Agne Zemaite is like a family doctor. Liza is probably on a first-name basis with her and I saw her when my back had the plague (because I thought it was indifferent to wash my clothes with rags that had been used with chemicals to clean the apartment, despite your mother saying not to. I was saving water though).
The TLDR of that visit is she couldn’t believe Maalouf was so easy to prescribe the meds he did for someone so young. Long story short, we’re going to favour her advice along with the (more child-friendlier) meds that come with it.
There’s the biggest-to-date bruise on your left cheek currently. You were dancing and spinning around at the Retreat and ran into the edge of the door. Your granddad walked into the room when he was dropping you off with a “don’t panic” announcement. It’s pretty bad but boys will be boys is what I told him. Your mother also got a heads-up warning. I hope this doesn’t deter you from dancing and the love you have for music (and Tiny Desk). Keep dancing sir, keep dancing.