Nobody Knows......

Seems as if the "troubles" of the last entry did not want to leave.

Mikey DID get over his early stage pneumonia with a round of antibiotics.  Huzbend DID recover.

But, alas Katie did not fair so well.

Last Tuesday she came down with a horrible hacky cough and began to breath quickly and shallow-y.  And so, on Wednesday, she stayed home from school and off to the Doctors office we went.

Our appt. was at 9:20am.  We did not leave the office until 3:00pm.  Yep.  WITH Mikey.  He was just about going insane.  They could not figure out what was wrong.  Her oxygen levels were bouncing all over into dangerous territory.  Then she developed a 102 fever while in the office.  Finally they decided on an chest xray.  The diagnosis - gunky lung (a.k.a. pneumonia) exacerbating her asthma.  It was off to the Children's Hospital ER once again.

OHHHHHH, this time I was prepared people!  I packed a bag with four days worth of clothes and toiletries, some snacks and some sanity for Katie (Nintendo DS, crayons, coloring books, a stuffed panda and her blankies).  We picked Huzbend up at work and he drove us to the hospital so that he would not be truck-less.

Sure enough, we had to stay overnight as Katie's oxygen levels were not recovering quickly enough after medication.  We ended up in the same wing of the hospital as last time and stayed pretty much the same amount of time.  Went in on Wednesday evening and were released on Saturday afternoon.

The reason for the hospital stay was to monitor Katie's oxygen levels.  When her lungs are restricted her "flow rate" can dip down to 93-95 when awake and then down below 90 when she is asleep.  Not very good when you know that a regular person can be anywhere from 95-100 when healthy.

So, that's two hospital visits in just two months.  Hooray for us.

Huzbend thinks that our medical insurance company is going to drop us siting that we have hit our quota of doctor AND hospital visits for the year.  Our pediatrician agrees and has stated that if he sees us in his office one more time this year - he will kick us out.

Katie is recovering and LOVED all the attention that she got at the hospital.  She now expects that every time she goes to a doctor that they will shower her with stuffed animals and toys.  That's just how she rolls.

As for me, I'm recovering too.  My cold is finally subsiding but my brain is not quite back up to speed.

In a reactionary and emotional move, I called a company to come clean our heating air ducts thinking that it might help Katie (and Mikey) breath easier not having so much gunk in the lines.  I wasn't thinking as the technician/salesman upsold me on some things that I totally didn't need but at the time thought that we did.  The cost of the service bloomed out of control and he began to upsell me again.  By that time it was too late to stop the services I had stupidly agreed too, so I declined anything else that he offered.

It was ridiculous of me and I'm ashamed and depressed that I lost our family this big amount of money.  There's nothing I can do about it.  I agreed to all of it and it was only about an hour after they left that I realized what I had done.  I didn't research the service they provided OR the company.  Stupid.  I'm usually SO skeptical.  A quick search online brought up all sorts of questions about need for air duct cleaning as well as many complaints against this particular company.

Sometimes, I wish there was a do-over button.  Don't you?

All this led to a nice little midnight breakdown where I cursed myself for being such a moron.  It was easy to fall into despair - too much sickness, too little fun family time, not enough sleep, not enough feeling of accomplishment, Mikey showing signs of ANOTHER cold......

But, today is another day.  Time to move on.  Try to take my focus off all the money that I've spent on Christmas, the wad of cash that we just spent on our garage doors, this months mortgage, groceries, upcoming vacations, haircuts.....Okay.  So, it's really hard for me to move on.

As my awesome and beyond forgiving Huzbend said, I really just have to let it go.  No sense obsessing about something that I really can't change.

The problem is, obsessing is what I do.