Illness can make you stressed

Not a particularly good week. Our son seems to have picked up a viral stomach bug. Doesn't sound much but with his condition, this sort of thing can be a major problem. (We know it's viral because he's already on a course of antibiotics for his last chest infection). Started one evening with him being 'a bit off' - this involved him having extra fits and quite severe asthmatic symptoms with copious production of fluids (he uses both epilepsy and asthma for communication and they both get worse anyway when he's stressed and/or uncomfortable). Keeping his airways clear therefore became even more of a problem than usual.

By following day the actual cause of the problem became apparent - high temperature and even a small vomit (this is extremely unusual as he's had operations to limit his 'food pipe' so that he's less likely to breathe in stomach contents). Even though he can't speak, he obviously felt lousy, so panadol etc. became order of the day. By mid morning he was completely exhausted and went into a deep, unrousable sleep. We've had a day or two of this now and he's gradually picking up but his condition makes him very vulnerable to what for us would just be an odd day off work.

We know these sort of things can be life threatening for him if we and the nurses don't keep on top of things, but we've lived with it so long, you'd think we'd be used to it by now. In a way we are - we've learned to just get on with things around him - but we still get wound up about it. We operate normally at a fairly high level of stress - it's another notch up just now.