Lighter side of July.....

July has so not been our month...kids have been sick, spent time in the hospital, kids have been sick once again with 103 degree temps, sore throats, and no strep...just viral.

AAARRRRRGGGGHHHH! Summer has not been good to us, although I guess I should say thank you that it is not worse!

Here are a few pics from the better times of this interesting month.
Ahuva Loves her baby brother....so much so, that she tries to eat him up!


Alistair is such a cool baby! He is looking mighty fine and cute in his Joe Cool glasses, compliments of mommy ( the things we can get away with doing to our kids as babies!!!)

Life may not be the party we hoped for, but while we are here we might as well dance

So we made it through the last couple of weeks with a few bumps in the road. But, we made it!
Let's see, to fill you all in, after we got diagnosis of pneumonia, things calmed down with Ahuva a little. She started to feel better and was starting to act like herself. The kid was happy, she was getting ice cream two times a day (we hide her medicine in her ice cream...hey it beats wearing penicillin all day!) However, Baby Alistair decided it was his turn to make us crazy. He began coughing and was having trouble breathing, so we ended up with the Decadron shot for him too. Unfotunately he had a reaction to the shot and became pale for two days... he is still coughing and I plan to take him this week to get re-checked just to make sure that he doesn't have anything else I don't know about.
Wait! You are thinking my week of hell was finally over? No way! Eli felt a little left out of the action, so she decided to be up all night screaming her ear hurt, of course my otoscope wasn't charged so I couldn't look...next day we went to the ENT and there was a possibility that she rutured (perforated) her ear drum. She had puss and goo and all kinds of wild looking stuff coming out of her ear...poor kid! she was so miserable! So we started her on medication, but she still says things sound 'low'...I think we have to get her hearing checked now too....
After ENT we headed over to audiology for Ahuva's annual hearing screen, which she cooperated so well for that they got a good amount of info and things look great!
By thursday last week my motto was...the hits just keep on coming! I have since decided that while life may not be the party we hoped for, while we are here we might as well dance...and so I dance, but my feet hurt and I am so not wearing my dancing shoes, can I leave for a while and come back in more comfortable shoes?

Pneu News

So it is official, Ahuva has pneumonia. We went yesterday to follow up with our pediatrician since we had been in the ER earlier in the week. She heard crackling and wheezing, and Ahuva still had a temperature, which suggests pneumonia. So we were started on antibiotics and sent home.

Last night at 10:15 pm, she woke up, with a fever of 105 degrees F..burning up, miserable. So we called the doctor who sent us in to the ER for a chest x-ray. Which came back bacterial pneumonia (ok, it was not a 100% conclusive either, but it appeared to have streaks that would support the pedicatricians earlier diagnosis of pnuemonia).

She got back home amidst a chaotic flurry of activity on our street. Apparently some idiot stole a car, crashed it on the street around the corner from us and ditched the car. There were eight police cars, three unmarked cars, two paddy wagons and two police dogs going all over the street, in back yards, up and down driveways looking for the person. When Daddy finally came home aroung 2 am, they managed to catrch them shortly after that....after over an hour of activity.

Daddy gets a big kudos, as he took Ahuva to the ER last night to give me a break...some break, I am such a control freak about her and her medical care, as I am the one that deals with all of it, he just sits back and lets me do it. But he managed to do a pretty good job last night. Although I did not sleep much, I dozed for 45 minutes...how could I possibly sleep if my little girl is in the ER.
I helped that one of the Cheif of ER was there last night taking care of my little girl....I knew she was in good hands.

I need to make a list of all her medical history and allergies and stuff for the fall, as I will be in school and not around all the time, it would be helpful, to give a peice of paper instead of calling every five minutes to talk to the ER staff and quiz daddy on what is going on.

Croup de jour

We have been busy in our house...making sure that the local emergency room knows how to handle situations where children are in repiratory distress from the croup. This comes at just the right time of the year, the changing of the gaurds...ie the new residents all start on July 1...I make it a habit to stay away from hospitals in July...no offense to the newbies, I just don't want to deal with them...this year, I broke that cardinal rule of mine. Oh well!

We have to start a couple of weeks ago for you to appreciate my situation. We had been diagnosed with strep three weeks ago, went on medication, the next day after the diagnosis we went into the hosptal for new ear tubes. After ten days of antibiotics, I took her back in last wednesday for a recheck to be sure the strep was gone. Then on thursday I had my yearly well check with the local Down Syndrome center ( I have to follow up with cardio now...that's another story). So on Friday when she developed a fever I thought maybe she still had strep. The rapid came back negative and the overnight I found out on friday was negative. So I just watched her. By Friday afternoon she had a croupy cough, and was miserable.

No big deal, right, just the croup? Well, Saterday morning she could barely breath. She was working so hard to get air...I thought that once she was upright for a while it would go away...maybe a steam bath would help. Yeah, right. By 11 o'clock she was taking breathing breaks from her activity...playing then stopping to lay down and breath...I felt so bad at that point I took her into the ER. We spent the afternoon there, getting Vapos and Decadron shots...finally she sounded better then she had when we had arrived that they let us go home.

But wait! We didn't sleep too hot saterday night, and ended up back in the ER Sunday night, once more struggling to breathe. THis time we got or Vapo, humidified O2 and were admitted overnight. THat was fun! I find great humor in this overnight admission. We had come into the ER at 10: 15pm, we made the decision to keep us overnight at 1am....we found a room and got into a room by 3 am....by the time we had the nurses in to do vitals, the floors docs to do an initial eval, and the docs for my medical practice come thru it was 5: 15 am. HAHAHA! I thought, we will be discharged with morning rounds at 7 am...ok, they rounded on us at 10am, were discharged after another shot of Decadron, which by the time we got the shot and signed our discharge papers, it was 11:30 am.

By the time I got to bed last night and fell alsleep, I had been up awake for over 40 hours. I realize now how these doctors do it...after a certain point you are soo tired you work on overdrive.

No tonight, I plan on going to bed nucie and early with no distractions, no interruptions.

Oh, did I mention my James woke up this morning with a croupy cough?

Hmmmm...I wonder if all the other new residents know what to do with croup? I think I will leave it to someone else to test them out. For now I have had my fill of doctors and hospitals...

ooops, I almost forgot I have a Cardiology appointment this afternoon at the hospital...YIKES!

I need a vacation!