Go away sickness!

While I was away on my girls weekend on Martin Luther King, Jr. weekend, Ken sent me a message on Saturday saying that Lila had woken up that morning covered in vomit from coughing. She didn't really have a fever so we weren't worried. We figured she had what Ken had earlier in the week.

Monday morning Ethan woke up with it as well. When I got home later in the afternoon I took their temps and they were at almost 100 so nothing to really worry about. We gave them Benadryl and Motrin and put them to bed

By Tuesday, Lila didn't feel too warm but I took her temp anyways and it was around 100.5. Ethan still seemed fine just a bad cough and low grade fever. Lila ended up throwing up a bit from getting upset and from a coughing fit.

On Wednesday both kids threw up from gagging while coughing or at least that's what we thought. Lila had a fever of 102 so we treated it with Motrin and she just cuddled with Grammy and me all day. I took the day off to be with the kids.

By Thursday Lila's fever came back at around 101. I had planned on taking her to the doctor that afternoon but she perked up around lunch time so I put it off.

On Friday we kept Ethan out of school for the 2nd day. Both kids woke up continuing to have a nasty cough. Ethan's cough kept him coughing and waking him up because it was so bad. Lila seemed to sleep okay at night. Ethan ran around like normal until about 2pm. At 2pm he laid down on the couch and immediately zonked out. He woke up a bit later and asked me where Grammy was, got upset, then promptly fell back to sleep. He hardly ever just falls asleep like that or even anywhere but his bed or ours.

By 3pm he really needed a treatment and I could hear him wheezing. His respirations were high and he kept sucking in his belly to breathe. I called Kaiser's advice line and talked with a nurse to see if we should bring him into the ER or wait for an after hours clinic appointment on Saturday.

After speaking with the advice nurse for about 20-30 minutes, counting his respirations 3x we determined that the oncall doctor, the nurse and myself didn't feel comfortable waiting for the morning.

So we headed to the ER. He coughed and wheezed all the way to the hospital and fell asleep almost immediately. At this point he'd pretty much been asleep since 2pm only waking up to take do his treatment at 4pm.

At the ER they took his temp in his armpit at 99.9 and his oxygen level was between 90 and 93%. They put us into a room. The doctor came in about 15 minutes later and examined him saying he felt warmer than 99.9 so she ordered a rectal temp. She looked at his ears and said that he definitely had one ear infection, if not two.

30 minutes later the nurse came in and gave him Tylenol and an albuterol nebulizer treatment. He perked up from the albuterol. Before this he had been laying on the gurney asleep or half asleep breathing hard. They then came in to take his temp which I thought was odd since they had given him Tylenol just 30-40 minutes earlier. Seemed kinda backwards to me. Even still his temp was 99.8. So my guess is he was really around 101 when we came in.

After this we were sent to xray to rule out pseumonia. 15 minutes later the doctor had looked at the xray and talked with Ethan's pulmonologist and they had decided that because his xray was clear that we should be prescribed a steroid for the wheeze and antibiotics for his ear infection.

After our 3 1/2 hour stay at the ER and waiting for Ethan's prescriptions we headed to McDonald's to pick up dinner and got home about 1130.

We ate, went to bed and were up at 2am to give Ethan an hour long treatment which helped but didn't change much. Ethan was wide awake at 7am (so much for sleeping in). I went to pick up Lila from my parents house about 9am and Ken laid down with Ethan for 90 minutes, got him up for a treatment.

By noon he was still refusing to eat and was really tired again so he laid down with me for a three hour nap!!! By the time he woke up for his afternoon treatment he had slept 4.5 hours out of the 8.5 hours he'd been awake and spent 2 hours of the time awake doing treatments.

The good news was that after that nap he started moving around and playing again. Since yesterday his appetite still isn't the greatest but he's not laying around either.

We had an interesting time attempting to get the liquid steroid down him. We mixed it with apple juice, then orange juice, then sugar this morning. Each time he either refused or threw it up. Thankfully he doesn't appear to really need it. We're still trying to give it to him but I think the wheezing has subsided quite a bit or even gone away altogether.

Since yesterday Lila has been whiny and clings to me. She doesn't really want daddy, just mommy. I think I'll need to take her in tomorrow to see if she has an ear infection. Until then there will be a lot of mommy/Lila time. Thankfully she's playing with Ethan now and giving me a rest. I have managed not to catch this horrible cold or flu. I feel a little weird today with drainage at the back of my throat, but otherwise fine. The test is still out as far as whether Ethan's got RSV, influenza or just a nasty virus. We should know today or tomorrow which one it is.

So that's what's been going on with us over the last week. Sorry for the long post. I'm hoping to look back on this posts after some time has passed. It's long so I can remember what happened later.