After trying to change the appointment for a couple of months without success (it meant Gaelle would miss her one and only out of school activity of the week), I finally surrendered and we made it to the hospital on D-day (today) 20 minutes early, having left plenty of time to face the horrendous parking conditions. Basically, finding a car park space there is like winning the lottery, a little miracle! Well, we found one after only 10 minutes of searching, hooray, and then ran to the main entrance in the rain and Scottish wind. A lovely start! It got my feet wet, which I hate more than anything!

After that, we were also lucky to find a couple of seats in the waiting room, but this one was the most child unfriendly of all. Fortunately, my ex-husband's partner's parents were there too, so we had a chat and Gaelle did her homework with them (let's say they did most of it for her, but that's not a serious enough mistake to express my disagreement and ruin an 'entente cordiale' between us!).

It turned out the dermatologist was about 40 minutes late already when we arrived, so you can do the maths and work out that Gaelle and I stayed there for a while... When you see kids behaving and remaining happy during such a long wait or on the plane for example, it's not that they are exceptionally well behaved, but the parents are highly creative, experts in 'playful' parenting and simply exhausted by the end of it! So was I by the time they called our names.

The appointment itself was OK, and I am saying just OK because the Dr hadn't read my email which included the full agenda and some pictures. Fortunately, I thought that might be the case so I had printed everything out, apart from the pictures due to my printer's ink running low. So I had to actually photograph my computer screen to capture my stored photos of Gaelle's skin during the summer  then show the specialist the camera's screen! It worked. When there is a will, there is a way. This meant that the specialist saw exactly what Gaelle's skin looked like at its worst and could make decisions on some new creams to try.

At that point, Gaelle fell asleep on my knees until the end of the consultation.

The mixed news is that the new cream is a more potent steroid, but it should only be used twice a week, compared to the current one which we have to use almost daily to have any effect - but which still failed to prevent flare-ups. It will also replace all the different creams I usually use apart from the 'lard' (Epaderm). So we should end up with just two creams in the 'cream cupboard' + boxes of bandages, my own nitrile gloves box, antibacterial soap, anti-histamines, etc on the side.

She also had the results of our latest allergy tests and not much surprises there: positive for house dust mite, pollen, cat (that's new), egg white and nuts. In fact, they didn't test for nuts but it's an obvious one to us. No milk, gluten or wheat allergy, which is a relief. The levels were not bad enough to continue with the sick kids' allergy referal, so that's cancelled. Apparently, they only send kids there when the first tests are really bad and need some more investigations. Oh well, I guess I am ok with that.

I have another follow-up appointment in January, this time early afternoon, so I'll have to take Gaelle off school after lunch.

Taking about allergy, Robyn had a scare at school. She was offered a peice of chocolate bar from a friend and panicked when she realised she hadn't checked for nuts (she is only intolerant, though). So she ran to the office to tell them the story and they phoned me straight away! Fortunately, nothing happened and she was fine, but Robyn had a stomach ache in the evening. I reckon this was due to the emotional she had earlier on! I am glad she went to tell the school office, this was a very sensible thing to do, so well done to Robyn.