This Week.....Not Much Better

So, everyone is on the mend from the respiratory distress of last week.

Katie and Mikey (and Huzbend) seem to be recovering well.  For some strange reason.....I did not get it.  No sickies for me this time around.  It's amazing.

REALLY amazing considering that I took care of Katie when she was sick, then came home to Mikey and Huzbend being sick AND I spent three days in the hospital with a whole bunch of sick people.

So, I escaped boogies and coughs but oh, I didn't get away scott free.  Oh, no.

On Monday, I had a lipoma removed from my right arm pit.  Yippee.  The doc gave me a local anesthetic and well, he was working right by my head you know.  I didn't actually see him do his dirty work, but I did see the instruments he used and I did feel all the pulling and pushing and cutting.  I also felt every damn tug of the suture line.  Dude was a maniac sewer.  Guess I should be happy that he was such a perfectionist.

The nurse was assuring me, pre-op, that they would try to find a way to cut that wouldn't leave such a noticeable scar.  I told her that it really didn't matter.  That I had scars all over my body and that one more wouldn't really matter.  I mean, it can't really compare to the huge gash that I have on my lower abdomen.  I'm already damaged goods.  She thought that was pretty funny.  I don't think I was trying to be funny.  I was serious.

I'm healing up nicely.  The bandage is off and now I'm just dealing with the sutures and the steri-strips that are still there.  They itch like crazy.

Next.

Tuesday.  Mikey fell on the sidewalk and scraped up both his knees pretty bad.  Blood was dripping down his legs.  This happened at about noon and he refused to walk for the rest of the day.  No, really.  He did not walk the rest of the day.  He either slid his butt along the ground or squat-walked around.

I finally got him to let me put bandaids on his knees, but soon had to take them off because he cried even MORE when I put them on.  You see, he absolutely refuses to let me put bandaids on any of his injuries, prefering instead to carry a bandaid around.  Yeah.  I don't know.

Wednesday.  Mikey and I got home from walking Katie to the bus stop.  I walked into our garage with Mikey and then decided to go back down our driveway to retrieve our garbage cans.  As I am at the bottom getting ready to pull one can up, I hear Mikey coming toward me.  He must want to help.

Um.  No.

Mikey is halfway down our driveway hill.  He is riding his balance bike at at least 100 MPH.  His feet are up and back and he has an Evil Knievel look in his eye.  And he has no helmet on.

Before I can react, his bike hits the flat of the sidewalk.  It goes one way and he flies spread eagle onto the pavement.

"JESUS CHRIST!!!!  MIIIIIIKEY!"  Is the first thing that springs from my mouth.  I'm pretty sure the whole city heard me.  I pick him up and blood is pouring out of his mouth and some shredded lip is just hanging.  Yikes.

I get the bleeding stopped with some pressure and a wet towel and I call the doctor.  They advised me to make an appt. to make sure that he was okay.  And he was.  Only a scraped up lip and a little scratch on his forehead.  No sign of concussion or anything worse.

I, on the other hand, was NOT okay.  Not only did I watch in horror as my 2 year old son face planted into the sidewalk after traveling ludicrous speed down our driveway with no helmet, I also had to endure the "shame on you" looks from the nursing staff at my doctors office.  Yes.  He is 2.  Yes.  I left him alone in the garage.  Yes.  I never in a million years thought he would take a joy ride down the driveway.

Sigh.

Yesterday was good.  Granma C.  flew in.  YAY for Granma's!

Today was calm - preschool, Jump Planet, normality.

Tomorrow.....I will kick your ass if you bring any more drama.  Seriously.  I will KICK YOUR ASS.

Consider yourself warned, Saturday.  

WEEZY!

Does anyone remember this?  And this?

Well, guess what?  We have ANOTHER hospital story to add to the growing list.

On Thursday, the 29th, Katie came down with a cold after school.  It was just an innocent little cold.  Friday came and went and it didn't change.  On Saturday, Katie seemed okay.  She didn't have any boogies a-leaking, so we decided to go to a birthday party at a local park.

I began to notice that Katie was not herself.

Like Inspector Clouseau, I deciphered the clues as best I could:  not running on the playground, not socializing with her friends, not eating whole bags of Pirate's Booty in a sitting, not finishing the coveted juice box.  Ahhhhhh, now veee are gitting somewhere!  My hypotheesis:  It meust mean she iz just tired freum not getting good sleep, yew see!

And just like Inspector Clouseau, I was wrong.  Yew fewl!  Swine, asthma!

The party was over and we hopped into the car to head home.  Katie fell asleep in her car seat.  It was then that I noticed that all the color had dropped from her face and with every breath came a deep and hissing wheeze.  Merde.

When we got home, I carried her upstairs and laid her in my bed.  I gave her a "steamie" treatment and decided to let her nap a bit.  We continued to check on her for about an hour and her breathing was not improving.  So, we decided to take her to an Urgent Care Center (kinda like an ER).

They immediately saw us in due to Katie's "shortness of breath".  Her oxygen levels were hovering at about 87 (normal is 98+).  If your body does not get enough oxygen, it begins to shut down the non-essential things - which basically means everything except your heart and brain.  So, we were quickly ushered back, given a room and she was immediately put on a continuous albuterol mist to open up her airways, an oxygen flow to supplement and a dose of steroids to relieve the inflammation in her lungs.

She quickly recovered her pallor and began to smile and interact - and drink chocolate milk.  Always a good sign.  But after about 2 hours of continuous albuterol mist & oxygen, she was still hovering at about 89 oxygen level.  After a quick chest x-ray (which showed just a bit of gunk in her lungs) and a quick puke on the xray techs floor (bye-bye chocolate milk), the ambulance was called to truck Katie over to the Emergency Room at Children's Hospital.

As most of you know, we only have one vehicle and I had it with us at the Urgent Care Center.  In order for us to get home from Children's, I needed to drive the truck to it.  That meant that Katie had to ride in the ambulance all by herself.  She was quite nervous about it, but after she met her driver and her nurse she decided that she was good to go.  I followed right behind all the way to the hospital - I could see her through the back windows, she even waved to me.

We spent another two hours in the Emergency room at Children's.  Again, on a continuous albuterol mist and supplemental oxygen.  And again, she did not recover her oxygen levels.  We were told that she would be admitted.

So, upstairs we went.  We got our own room.  Yay.

All in all we spent Saturday night, Sunday, Monday and all day Tuesday in the hospital.  Her lungs eventually opened up, but her body just wasn't sucking in enough oxygen for the docs to feel comfortable sending her home.

It was a LONG three days.  I was not prepared to spend that much time in the hospital.  I had no toys, no snacks, no extra clothes.  Katie went through waves of boredom, depression, stubbornness, and extreme happiness bordering on hyper (albuterol has that side effect).  Her mobility was limited because she was hooked up to a pulse oximeter as well as having oxygen tubes up her nose.  She wasn't allowed to leave the room because the docs thought that her lung infection was viral and she wasn't allowed to walk around the room because she couldn't be off the oxygen.

She also didn't like the food.  When you have food allergies, hospital food is even more plain and gross looking than normal.  She wouldn't eat any meal they sent down.  Instead she lived off of saltine crackers, chocolate pudding, red jello, milk and popcorn.  I also spent a fortune buying Legos at the hospital gift shop.

That's not to say that her experience was all bad.  She got two stuffed animals from the Urgent Care Center, she had a home-made blanket waiting on her hospital bed (made by Project Linus), and hospital volunteers brought down a bucket full of toys/DVD's/Games for her to play with.  And all the doctors and nurses and respiratory techs were so patient and understanding with her....even in the middle of the night when she was, uh, not her best.

In the middle of all this, Mikey came down with the cold too.  Early Tuesday morning Huzbend noticed that he too was wheezing.  They hoofed it (literally) to our pediatrician's office where Mikey was diagnosed with the exact same thing as Katie was at age 2 - restrictive airway disease.  R.A.D. is really just another way of saying asthma.  He was sent home with steroids for lung inflammation as well as albuterol.

Both Katie and Mikey are doing fine now.  I think we're past the worst of it.  They both still have this nasty sounding cough, but at least there is no wheezing.

There's really nothing that we can do different to stop these flare-ups from happening since they come with the cold season.  We just have to continue the daily maintenance medications for Katie and hope that Mikey doesn't start down the same asthma path.  Forever will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will.

You said it, Yoda.

Wheezing, coughing, asthma.....the dark side they are.