The Sick Update

Thankfully, the older three are finally all on the mend. You would almost never know how rotten the week started out. We dragged all four of them into the pediatrician on Monday and left with what passes for a clean bill of health. No RSV, no Croup, no Strep. Just something viral to wait out.

As the week progressed, Thomas and Sarah Grace returned to their old selves. Elizabeth struggled a bit longer, but she eventually kicked it to the side also. Our little Anna, on the other hand, got progressively worse.

The past couple of nights, I have sat up in a recliner with her resting as best as she could on my chest. Suffice it to say, that meant little rest for either of us due to her coughing fits and stuffy little nose. It clenched at my heart to listen to my baby rasping for hours on end.

Today we took her back to the doctor's office. Joshua played outside with the older three while Anna and I went inside to have her checked out. Lungs? Fine. Ears? Fine. Nose? Fine. Throat? Fine. Conclusion? There is really no way to cure it. The doctor asked what we were doing to treat her, and I just looked at him blankly. He's a doctor, right? He wants to know what kind of medications we are using, right? He had mercy on me and asked if we were using the nose bulb. Yes, we are. Letting her be upright as much as possible? Yes, we are.

Those two little questions kicked my brain into gear and I was able to (almost) verbalize our treatment plan, such as it was. I couldn't find the word 'humidifier' in what is left of the ol' gray matter, but after waving my hand around for a moment and uttering words like 'water' and 'fan', the smart and patient man with the letters behind his name supplied me with the word I was floundering for.

It was a bit of a boost to my sleepy ego that everything I said we were doing were things he wanted us to do and everything he suggested for us to do we were already doing. Not so very long ago, I got all flustered when we would take a sick child to the doctor and he would rattle off this seemingly endless list of precautions we should take, symptoms to be leary of, and way to help ease the suffering of the sick child.

Back to Anna, though, he did give us a prescription for a decongestant mild enough for infants. I gave her a dose of it just after her seven o'clock nursing and quickly succumbed to a peaceful sleep. That was 4 hours ago. She missed her 'last nursing of the night', but I'll not complain. That little girl needed some rest.

I laughed as I read the side effects for this drug...drowsiness and dizziness. Oh, and one should not drive or operate heave machinery while taking the medication. I had this mental image of Anna doing the cross-eyed-infant thing and sitting behind the dash of a bulldozer, nodding off.

Speaking of nodding off, I think I had best be done for the night. My pillow calls.