Though I can’t force, I do urge you to read my previous 2 posts ~ The Beginning and The Progress , before you get to this one, or else you may not fully FEEL the joy in my heart as I write this final post about the 7-long-months of struggle with Keatkeat and with myself.

Its took 7 months, yes it was that long. My sis asked me few months back, why didn’t I blog about the struggle I went through every morning? I shouted at Keatkeat so loud that my volume works better than my sis snoozing alarms, to wake her up for work. It was not just a physical, mental and emotional torture for Keatkeat as he tried to win this battle with the HELP from his almost-going-mad-mommy, it was stressful for the WHOLE FAMILY too.

Now it can happen any moment. The sudden change of temperature, passing by a construction site, smelling his baby-bolster or even when he is half-way chewing his pork chop rice and “Haahhh…Cheee”. I bet you can imagine the mess spread out 2 feets in front of him; the chewed-up rice will be on this hands and the table and some back to where it began with (that is back to the bowl of ‘fresh’ rice). Will you let him eat that bowl of rice then?!!! With the extra flavoring of Mucus and Saliva and Half-chewed-up food bits?!!! We didn’t! We couldn’t! Its TOO GROSS! Can you imagine how much FOOD we have wasted?!! *Ashamed*

I didn’t want to complain at the beginning of every blog post for those 7 months, it would be awful! I wanted this story to wrap up nicely. To have the beginning and hopefully a nice ending (solution). And The time has come. Its been a month since I last yelled at Keatkeat. *Hands Waving in the Air ~ Yeah!* He is able to react faster than his nose for a month now. I think its time to REJOICE. My boy had WON the battle. Not that his sneezing has stopped, but that he has trained his mind to tackle the problem like an adult, in full control. *Yeah*

If he is woken because of ‘IT’ in the middle of night, though he whines, he doesn’t forget to cover his Mouth and Nose and KEPT his little hand there, no matter how many times he continues to sneeze his way to the toilet. Yes, he woke us up too, but we no longer need to JUMP out of bed as if there was a bomb attack! We stay awake, lying on our pillow and listen for any SOS call, but there never had been, for a month now….*Yeah* After the minutes of washing and blowing in the toilet, the little figure in the dark just move back to his mattress and continues his sleep like nothing had happened…. *Hooray*

Months before today, I sat and thought “Could It Be? Could my poor boy be suffering because of his dad and mom? Could he have inherited his parents’ sinusitis?” High Chance, eh?! Yes, he did, with confirmation from the doctor.

Allan was a very weak boy when he was little. His immunity system was terrible ~ according to my MIL. His sinus was so bad, he was on those bitter Chinese brewed tonic for YEARS!

And Me? I was under the mercy of the cold surgical knife. My sinus was so serious when I was a teenager that I must have at least 6-8packets of tissues with me every day for school. And by the end of the day, they are all soaked through. At 16, I was diagnosed with Chronic Sinusitis. My face was bloated, I had fever and persistent sore throat for weeks.

When I went for the Head-Scan, the result was GROSS! My whole head was filled with Mucus, which made me looked as if I’ve put on weight on my Face. The sore throat was caused by the infection from the prolong-stay of the Mucus in my ENT area (Ear-Nose-Throat).

After the 2 days stay after the surgery, my doctor (who died 2 years after operating on me in a Car Crush with her husband during an anniversary trip to Australia) said I needed to be on a life-long medication in order to prevent it from happening again. And so I was on Clarytine till I was pregnant at 25. Though my gynae said it was ok to continue, I just didn’t want to. And boy, aren’t I glad I made that decision! ‘Cos since then, I’ve stopped taking it daily, except on very very terrible ‘sniff-sniff’ days. I love those medication-free days! *Yeah* I’m free!

The only thing that made me feel better, when I was at war during my teens, was bathing every morning. I sneezed lesser, it did help. And so I did it to Keatkeat too. Boy, he sure is my son! It worked for him as well as it did for his mom!

Over the past 8 months (7months of battle + 1month of victory) and NOW, these are the things we have been doing other than 1st bathing him in the morning, before anything else.

2nd Forbide Keatkeat’s favourite soft-toy, Winnie the Pooh, to sleep with him.

3rd Stop his WEIRD HABIT! Keatkeat likes to uncover part of his BABY-bolster (small photo), revealing the ‘rough-bolster-skin’.

He would slip his hand into the cover and rub his fore-arm on the ‘rough-skin’, close his eyes with full satisfaction glowing on his face and said, “Soooooo ‘Shu-Fu’ (comfortable in Mandarin)” We believe the stuffings inside the bolster may sneak out of the ‘bolster-skin’ and might cause irritation to his nose. Ok, I’ve mentioned before he has WEIRD SLEEPING HABITS back in March 2008 ~ remember? he ‘swims’ in order to sleep?!!! So I guess this bolster-rubbing-habit is ranked no. 2 then.

4th We change his mattress cover, pillow case, bolster cases (he has 2 bolsters) every 2-3days to ensure that it doesn’t collect too much dust.

5th On warmer days, we will let him wear slightly cooler clothes to bed and NOT have the fan switched on at all.

I don’t think the above measures help significantly, ‘cos he is still having the “Haahh…Cheee” moments, but at least we make an effort to help in every way we can to make my boy feel better….*Hmmm….*

The ONLY complain I have now is, I can never get the timing right every morning. ‘Cos once his sneezing starts, it can go on for 5mins or as long as 20mins. He would be stuck at the basin, blowing his nose and washing away the *Yuck*.

School starts at 8am, it takes 2mins to walk to school (that is IF he DID NOT sneeze on the way there). When I wake him up early, say 7am, he could be perfectly ok with just ‘sniff-sniff’ or sometimes ‘snort-snort’, no sneezing at all, and we would be super early for school then!

But sometimes when I allow him to sleep slightly longer, he could be in his sneezing routine at the basin for the next 20mins and we end up being late for school for half an hour! Hmmm….I guess many of you would say, its better early than late, and that’s what I had been doing. Sometimes when he does have the attacks, I’m glad I made the right choice; But when he is sneeze-free, I feel guilty for depriving him from the extra minutes of sleep….. *Sigh*

But this is no BIG issue, Really! ‘cos the worst is over already! I started the 3-Day long post with this sentence and I think by wrapping this memorial experience with Keatkeat with the same sentence is just too perfect:

Finally, after 7months, I feel relieved, at peace with my boy, at peace with myself….