Family Update: Another ER Visit and A Different Diagnosis

Some people know what's been going on with us lately, some know only parts, and others probably have just wondered why I've been a bit absent lately on the blog and other social media (and I apologize for any non-answered emails). I figured an update here was appropriate and I could then easily share the story with anyone who has been wondering about us.

The short story is that after two trips to the ER and one hospital stay in a month, we have a child with asthma. That doesn't really explain a whole lot, so here's the longer version.

In mid-July Peter started not feeling well and we ended up at a doctor appointment, then the ER, and then admitted to the hospital. I mentioned this in a 7 Quick Takes post shortly after it all happened. you can read about it in Take #6 on this post HERE.

So the diagnosis then was pneumonia. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't.

Fast forward to August 17, almost exactly one month from his hospital stay, and his breathing seemed very labored again. He woke up that morning seeming a little off, so we gave him an albuterol treatment (the nebulizer) before leaving for Mass that morning. By the time we got home he was sounding bad again, so we did another one. But his breathing wasn't improving much and he was starting to get that grunting sound back. So I called the Twilight Clinic to find out if we should bother with them or go straight to the ER (told them we had dealt with this the month previous) and they said go to the ER. So, Hubby and Peter headed out. It was probably around 1:30, maybe 2:00, that afternoon.

I got updates from Hubby here and there and it sounded like Peter was responding well to some breathing treatments. It was looking like he was going to be sent home. During one of our phone conversations was when I first heard mention of possible asthma. Eventually I heard around 8 that evening that they were going to be sent home. They pulled in around 10:30 and I told Peter I'd get him anything he wanted for dinner. He chose yogurt, applesauce, and cinnamon-sugar toast, so that's what he got.

That was a Sunday. I made a follow-up with the pediatrician for Tuesday where we discussed asthma some, did some more nebulizer treatments, and got a new prescription to fill (someone in the ER didn't write one of the prescriptions they gave us correctly and I thought it looked odd when I got it filled so I waited until we saw the pediatrician and she agreed with me). We were also given an appointment for Thursday with the Pediatric Pulmonology Department.

As a side note, I went to the pharmacy on that Sunday to fill a prescription I had from July for more albuterol. I ended up getting the big box which was HUGE! 60 vials huge!! Then I went back on Monday with the two prescriptions from the ER. I went again on Tuesday with the prescription I got from the pediatrician and then again on Thursday (drop off) and Friday (pick up). I've spent a lot of money there recently. AND ... I now recognize the pharmacy's phone number on my phone when I get the automated "your prescriptions are ready" call. Hopefully we are done for a while.

Thursday's Pulmonology appointment was really good. The doctor was very nice and took time with me. We discussed asthma, what it means, a plan for treatment, allergies, and his nurse went over the treatment plan in detail with me as well. Plus they gave me a bunch of information to read. And we go back in three months for a follow-up.

So for now, we have an inhaler that he uses every four hours (albuterol, and I can use either the inhaler or the nebulizer; same medication, just different methods of distribution). Then he has a second inhaler that contains a steroid that is used twice a day, morning and night. Currently we are supposed to do 4 puffs of that one and then wean him down to two. He was on a prednisone for four days which we just finished up on Saturday. And finally he has some Singulair he takes just before bed.

I was taking in so much information this past week that I was starting to feel overwhelmed. It's hard enough to get things done on the weekends and also spend time with my kids without running a bunch more errands and trying to clean the house from top to bottom. I went to work on Thursday afternoon and just could not concentrate! So I made a very last minute decision on Friday morning and took a vacation day. I went and bought impermeable mattress and pillow case encasements for the boys' room, I washed all the sheets from their room (and Silas' room), dusted the furniture, and vacuumed everything, including moving the bed to get under it. I got the encasements all on and remade beds. I haven't yet done much else in the rest of the house, but luckily we had recently had guests so I had cleaned most of the house earlier in the week.

Now I just have to plan to actually change sheets once a week and figure out how to vacuum twice a week. I can vacuum and dust once over the weekend, but how in the world I'm going to find a way to do it once during the week is beyond me. Especially since Peter can not be in the room that is being vacuumed and he can't go into the room for 30 minutes after it is vacuumed. Normally we have about two hours between when we get home and when we start getting kids to bed, and those two hours are pretty packed.

There are a number of other things I hope to do and a few things that won't be happening (like replacing carpet with flooring or switching out our furniture, just can't do those things right now). But I need to get rid of some curtains that we have left hanging up from the previous owners of the house (which won't be sad at all, there are some horribly ugly curtains in our family room that I've been dying to get rid of) and I want to try and wash as many parts of the couches as I can. I've toyed with the idea of getting a cleaning service, even just once a year to do things like blinds and ceiling fans and all those things that are a pain and don't necessarily need to be done frequently, but now I'm seriously considering it. It'd be nice to know that we can get a good deep clean 1-2 times a year while I handle regular maintenance as much as possible.

I'm sure we'll be learning a lot more about asthma and allergies and who knows what as we go forward in the months and years to come. For now, Peter is doing great! He's running around, playing with his brothers, getting into trouble, and just being 3 years old. His breathing is excellent at the moment, I have't heard much coughing at all and definitely no grunting. So we're pleased.

Only thing we need now is tips on how to teach a 3 year old to take a sip of water, keep it in his mouth, swish it around, and spit it out. He needs to do this after the steroid inhaler and he doesn't yet get it. It's so hard to explain something that seems to intuitive to us.

If you've read this whole long story, thank you for sticking it out with me. As a reward, I give you a recent testosterone pile:

Yep, that's all four of my boys piled up there.

Your Mission: Short and Sweet

I feel like I've been neglecting this poor little blog for the last few months. I know I said I was going to be writing less, but I didn't intend to stop writing altogether. Sorry for that, dear readers.

Today I'm home from work so I thought I'd pop in with a short post. Sort of an update. But then I realized that I don't have a lot to say, really. I mean, I do, if I wanted to write a longer post (and I have plenty of things on my mind I could scribble away about), but I don't. Short and sweet was my objective for today.

So, getting to the point ...

The reason I'm home: strep throat. I don't think I've had strep throat since I was a kid. I certainly done recollect the last time and I'm not certain enough to say I've never had it, so let's just say it's been a very long time! This winter has been terrible! I'm generally a healthy person and am not used to being sick this often. I guess this is the result of having kids now, particular kids who spend their days around other kids.

Second, I had an article on Catholic Sistas last Friday: Ignorance Demands Charity and Patience. I was pleased with how it turned out although it's not the article I thought I was writing. The Holy Spirit has a funny way of making that happen. So the end result is not as much my doing as that I allowed the Holy Spirit in to dictate the direction of the post. Hope you like it!

And that's it. Short and sweet. Mission accomplished.

7 Quick Takes Friday, no. 50

~1~

I had a few friends over for a prayer group meeting on Tuesday evening. We hadn't gotten together in several months! So it was great to catch up and share what we've all been doing in our prayer lives, what we're currently reading or studying to help us become better Christians, and how we are evangelizing others through how we live our lives. At the end as we started gathering our stuff my friend C says to me, "Oh, I have maternity clothes in the car for you." Okay, I said I'd go out with her and grab them. Then I notice my friend S looking a little surprised and she says, "Wait, do you need them?" She thought maybe someone had inadvertently spilled the beans.

Haha! No, no, I do not need the maternity clothes. C was returning them to me, she had borrowed them during her last pregnancy. We all had a good laugh at that one.

~2~

We bought a carpet for the boys' bedroom. Our house is all hardwood floors and since moving in we've bought one area rug for the living room. We have been wanting something for the boys' room for a long time ans we finally did it. It got delivered Wednesday night during dinner. So after dinner, we put the boys in the playroom and we go up to roll out the carpet. It took us a while to line it up with the pad underneath, but we finally got it. Taking the boys up later was an interesting site. They were fascinated by this softness under their feet. It was funny to watch their reactions! Ethan loved it and kept laying down and putting his face down into the carpet. He also did a lot more crawling than he has done in a long time. And then he discovered that the hard floor was still there on either end, which led to him crawling to one side to see the hard floor and turning around and crawling back to the other to feel the hard floor on the other side. He was so silly!

~3~

What was even funnier was that Ethan immediately laid down on the carpet Thursday morning when I got him out of bed. I think he loves his new carpet.

~4~

I've fallen behind on blogging recently mostly because of perpetual sickness in our home. First Peter was sick, then I wasn't feeling well, then Ethan got sick, then we had an appointment with the allergist who also diagnosed ear infections in both boys, then I got sick again. Through all of this Hubby has remained relatively healthy. He woke up one morning with a frog in his throat causing his voice to sound an octave too low, but he otherwise feels fine. At the moment, he's fine, the boys seem to be back to normal, and I'm (hopefully) shaking off the last of whatever this is. I'm just so tired of being sick!

~5~

On a more positive note: I bought my first Christmas gift of the year this week! It's a gift for my goddaughter. I'm so excited to give it to her. 

~6~

Next week is Thanksgiving! I love this holiday. The pretty fall colors, the cool air, being surrounded by family, the warmth of good food. Most important of all, an entire holiday to give thanks to God for all of our blessings. What could possibly be better than that! 

This year we're having some people over to our house for the holiday. Adults and kids included, we'll number about 13. What are you doing for the holiday? Also, tell me what one dish you must have at your Thanksgiving dinner?

~7~

In just a couple short days I will be celebrating another birthday. I am not one to hide my birthday or my age. I think we should all be proud of our years no matter how many or how few they are. I'll be 38 this coming Sunday. We'll be celebrating with a breakfast date on Saturday morning while Ethan's godmother comes over to watch the boys and her own two children. I hope she'll survive four kids at once: ages 3, 17 months (my boys), and 5 months. She is such an awesome friend!

Happy Thanksgiving!!

For more Quick Takes, head over to Conversion Diary by soon-to-be reality TV star Jen Fulwiler.

Saturday Smiles, no. 19

Hubby with his boys

I'm going to be honest ... it's been a rough week. Between being sick, one child being sick, and the presidential election, I'm just glad the week is over. I'm still not feeling well as I write this, but I am home alone in an empty house. Ahhhhh! So, no better time than the present to reflect on the blessings this week also contained.

Wednesday I got the phone call at work that one of the boys wasn't feeling well. I called my husband because he had the van with the car seats. He went and picked up the sick boy and took him home. But the question was, how do we get healthy boy at the end of the day? I had spiritual direction right after work (which was why Hubby had the van in the first place) and he had a meeting at 4 PM that he really needed to be at.

I gave him two options:
1. I cancel my appointment for spiritual direction and come home by 3:30 so he can go back to work. He could take the van and pick up the healthy child on his way home.
*OR*
2. I keep my appointment and he misses his meeting, I come home at lunch to switch cars and after spiritual direction I can pick up the healthy child on my way home.

I fully expected Hubby to choose option 1. I was surprised when he chose option 2 instead. He seemed concerned that this was a meeting that he had to be at, and yet he chose the option that meant he had to miss this important meeting. I was willing to reschedule my thing, but I wanted him to make this decision since either way, he had to leave work to begin with because he had the only car that could transport our children.

I don't know if he chose the way he did because he felt like my spiritual direction was more important or if he decided that as long as he was home he might as well stay there? Either way, I recognized that he gave up something, completely changing his plans, for me and my plans. It made me smile because he made a sacrifice for me, small as it might have been in the grand scheme of things, and it allowed me to continue working on my spiritual growth.

Thank you, Jesus, for the wonderful man you have given to me.

Saturday Smiles, no. 9

To be perfectly honest, this week was not all that good. Well, no ... let me rephrase that. It was a horrible week! I was dreadfully sick for a few days at the beginning of the week and, once I was feeling better, I still had zero energy and couldn't look at food. Thursday was the first day that I really started feeling normal again. Friday was much, much better.

Friday morning it occurred to me that I hadn't paid any attention to how God was blessing me this week. I know intellectually that even in the midst of my pain and suffering He was blessing me in some way. Unfortunately I wasn't feeling it and the brain was too foggy to think back on the week.

Which brings me to Friday night, sitting down to write this post. As I sit here contemplating how God has been working in my life I am actually reminded of how one decision about twenty or so years ago completely changed my life, or at least changed the course I thought my life was on. I am thinking about this now because lately I've been feeling a string pull back to the my dreams from before that one decision of twenty-some years ago.

It's funny how one decision can make all the difference. There are probably other smaller decisions that played into that bigger decision from 20+ years ago, but I think back and I know that one really made the difference. That one put me on a path that puts me where I am today. Thinking about this now I can see how God guided me to this place; He had a hand in that decision making process all those years ago, even though I had no thought of Him at the time at all. And now that I'm here, where I am supposed to be according to His plan, I feel like He is placing old desires back onto my heart. Those things I thought would be a big part of my life that took a back seat for more than twenty years are now nagging at me.

So I had to laugh.

First, at myself. Oh how I worry about things sometimes. But God has it all under control.

Second, at God. Even when we think we have given up certain dreams, God has a way of bringing them back to us one day. He is a tricky fella. I laugh and He laughs with me. And probably at me a little too. Which I'm sure I deserve.

And that is what made me smile this week. It wasn't exactly one "moment" from my week, but more of a realization twenty years in the making.

Now God needs to reveal to me how this next step can come about. That may take me another 20 years.

What made you smile this week? How were you most aware of God's presence in your life? Share in the comments or link up your own "God moment" post from your blog by clicking the button below and filling out the fields that appear. Please also include a link in your post back to this one. Thanks!

The Bug has Bitten

And it's not a good one. I am taking a (hopefully very) short blog hiatus for sickness. I had a great post idea in mind to work on Sunday night for Monday morning, but it will now have to wait. :( Hopefully I'll feel better soon and will be back in time for Wordless Wednesday (because I have something totally fun planned for that!).

I hope everyone had a much better weekend than I did. Take care, faithful blog readers!

Unproductive Day, Might as well Blog

After my radio interview on Friday I was going to write up a post about a thought I had during and after the interview.  Still planning on that (hopefully later this week) but right now I feel the need to share about my unproductive day instead.

That sounds boring, doesn't it?  But stick with me, hear me out a little ...

We had a rough weekend, the boys have been sick.  Actually, back up, *I* was sick last week, Ethan started to seem a little down on Friday, by Saturday it was obvious he was sick as well.  Peter has a runny nose and was a little fussy over the weekend, but mostly in a good mood.

Which brings us to Monday.  I finally feel well for the first time in 5 days.  Yay!!  Despite my sickness last week I took advantage of the boys being in daycare to work on my sabbatical project.  I did pretty well, despite the sickness.  Monday should have been productive as well.

"Should" being the operative word!  And so the story goes ...

Have to remind myself what my
healthy, happy boys look like.
So cute!

I know when I go to get the boys up Monday morning that they are not going to daycare.  Ethan continues to be fussy, gets upset at the slightest things, and once he starts crying he seems bothered by everything around him.  Poor guy, he makes me so sad.

Lots of crying during breakfast, clinging to mom during the morning, crying anytime Peter touches him ... I find it exhausting.  Both boys are in their cribs for a morning nap BEFORE 10 am.

That was probably partly because they needed it and partly because *I* needed it.  Sometimes you got to do what you got to do.

They slept for an hour ... better than nothing.

More play time, lunch (which means more crying), back to playtime (and crying), and then the doorbell rang.

With two boys crying down in the playroom someone from the electric company is here to install the conservation stuff on our air conditioners.  Not a big deal, it's outside, thankyouverymuch, and goodbye.

More clinging to mom, wiping noses, throw in a load of laundry, start looking at the clock to see if another nap time is in order.  It's only 12:30.

Doorbell rings again.  Apparently the breaker switch on one AC unit is now broken.  This means the AC is not working until someone can come out to fix it.  Greeeeeeeeeeeeat!

Finally just before 2pm, I put the boys down for another nap.  There's more whining going on from two obviously sleepy boys when the doorbell rings again.  At least I know the AC will be fixed!!  With the boys cries carrying through the house via the strategically placed baby monitor in our front hall, the electrician comes in and I take him to the electrical box where he discovers that the circuits aren't all labeled, but he tries one anyway and heads outside.

I run upstairs knowing that there are probably four pacifiers scattered across the boys' room and just as I get them both settled again I hear the electrician come in and call for me.  I just want to yell "Shhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!"  Luckily I don't.

Anyway, he gets the circuits worked out, labels them for the next guy that will need them, and heads back outside.  By 2:30 he is done, ACs are all working, and the boys are finally asleep.

Work on sabbatical project or give up for the day??  That is the question.

My answer: give up.  

Procrastination wins again!

Thankfully, the boys are starting to seem a bit better and my hope is that they will be well enough to go back to daycare on Tuesday.  I should also feel back to 100% and then I can dive back in.  That gives me four days to make some good headway on this project before I go back to working in my office.  Once I am back at work I can continue to work on this project, but it will be along with all my other responsibilities.

Oh responsibility, how I have not missed thee.