Helen’s Fostering Blog
First Day Together
By the end of the first day together I knew every word to the song Baby Shark, Harry loved it and sang it constantly for weeks ?. Both children were up early which I had expected, and they wanted to constantly eat and drink.
Harry was our main concern that day as prior to arriving we had been advised he had athletes’ foot, when we actually inspected his feet the first evening, we noticed that it was really bad and he also had a number of blisters.
His poor feet were red raw and bleeding where he’d been scratching them constantly. I had originally planned to take him to the local chemist that morning but seeing how bad they were I popped over to a neighbour that happened to be a nurse at our local doctors’ surgery.
Bless her she opened the door and had not long got out of the shower, but she was happy to help us. She had a look at both of Harry’s feet and advised me that it looked like serve athletes foot and ill fitted shoes. She felt our best option was to take Harry to the local walk in centre to get them treated asap.
We understood that we would be waiting for quite a while to be seen so we had our first lunch together sitting in a hospital waiting area.
We laugh about this now!
The Consultant confirmed Harry had serve athletes foot that had not been treated for a very long time. I felt so sorry for him, he must have been in a lot of discomfort and pain for a quite so time. So off we went in hunt for what proofed to be difficult to find spray for athletes’ foot, new school shoes and trainers were brought for both children, oh and a birthday cake for my stepdaughters birthday get together that evening.
We had already organised a meal out at TGI Friday’s for Libby’s birthday with family and friends and whilst we cancelled some of the guests who were coming as we thought this might be a bit overwhelming for Harry and Beth so soon after they had arrived we still felt it important for Libby to enjoy her planned birthday weekend.
So, with our immediate family in tow we all sat round for a birthday meal for Libby. Harry and Beth were amazing, chatting and appearing at ease immediately with everyone.
I am not going to lie it was a relief as I couldn’t have dreamed it would go so well. On the car journey home later that evening Harry and Beth fell asleep they must have been exhausted as were we! …. talk about hitting the ground running!
Helen – A Blogging Foster Carer.
