Look, New Gloves!

Cute picture of Emily.

Horrible Week!

It has been a nightmare of a week. Ashton started getting sick a week ago on Wednesday, and he ran a fever from Wednesday thru Sunday. I took both him and Emily to the doctor on Thursday of that week hoping they had not come down with the flu. They swabbed Ashton for the flu, and it came up negative, and as Emily's lungs sounded so bad, they did an x-ray of her chest which was also negative. I took them home without so much as a cough medicine prescription for either. Then Braylon started sounding bad, but Ashton and Emily slowly improved. By Monday, Braylon was needing more oxygen than his sister, so back to the doctor we went. He was diagnosed with a sinus infection, but not the flu, so he was started on antibiotics. I was also told that it was okay to send Ashton back to school at that point. Ashton returned to school on Tuesday, but as the day progressed, Braylon started struggling more and more to breathe. Emily still sounded bad, but she was handling it well for her. Ashton got home from school and he was feeling kind of tired but insisted that he wanted to go out to the college for an after school party he had been invited to, so I relented. Denny drove him out there while I was tending to the younger kids. About an hour and a half later, Denny and Ashton got home, and Ashton was in very bad shape. He just came in and flopped down, and Denny called out to me to come look at him. We could barely keep him awake, and we couldn't get him to answer questions very well. What we did get out of him was that he could not breathe, his chest hurt so bad he didn't want to breathe, and he was so tired that he wanted us to leave him alone. We had a horrible time keeping him awake more than ten seconds at a time. Braylon the baby was also struggling very badly, and I had actually been considering taking him to the ER, so when Ashton came in like this, we packed both Ashton and Braylon up and went to the the hospital. It turned out that they both had pneumonia most likely secondary to the H1N1 virus (even though they both tested negative), and Ashton had positive blood cultures as well. They both earned a night in the hospital, IV's, and high doses of antibiotics. Emily is slowly improving on her own, Ashton and Braylon are also now improving, and now Ryan has come down with a nasty cough but no other symptom as of right now. And then Friday night, Friday the 13th of course, I came down with a fever and the worst cough ever, and now I feel like I have been hit by a truck! Most definitely the flu! As I said, it has been a nightmare of a week!

Not Quite Right

Something is definitely going on with Emily. I have been watching her very closely for the past week, and I am afraid she has come down with something. She gets a little worse every day which is pretty typical for how she goes into one of her sick spells. She started off breathing faster and harder than normal about a week ago and wanting her oxygen and inhaler more. Then about 4 days ago, she started wheezing on her right side. The next day, she started wheezing on both sides. Albuterol was helping, and the wheezing was coming and going. Now she has really harsh breath sounds throughout, and the Albuterol isn't really helping a whole lot anymore. Pretty typical for Emily. Ideally, I would like to start steroids at this point as I am fairly confident she will not fight this off without them, but I am waiting on her doctor to call back. I took both her and Ashton to the pediatrician today, and they swabbed Ashton to check for flu, and that was negative, thank goodness (he is coughing like crazy and running a fever). They also did a chest x-ray on Emmers due to the way she sounded, and they were going to call me back with results and instructions in "about an hour." When the pediatrician still had not called at 4:50 PM, I called back to make sure she hadn't forgotten, and I was told that she had not had a chance to look at the x-ray yet, but that the nurse had it pulled up waiting for her, and the doctor would be returning my call shortly. That was 2 hours ago, and still no call. Actually, I am fairly sure at this point that she will not be calling, but this is beyond frustrating. Why did I even bother to take her to the pediatrician?? Of course I know the answer is because that is what the pulmonologist would have wanted me to do, and I know it is frustrating for the pulm to have to be bothered by little problems like this. But knowing Emily as I do, I know good and well that if we don't do something pretty quickly, it will inevitably turn into a very big problem. If I haven't heard back from them by morning, I will call them back, and if I don't get anywhere, I guess I will skip straight to the pulm. I know they hate that, but gotta do something. Way beyond frustrated here!

Moving onto happier thoughts, I am going to share a couple of photos.
Below is a pic from Halloween Trick or Treating! My gorgeous bunch of kiddos, Ashton (the alien head thing), Ryan (death), Emily (a witch), and Braylon (my pumpkin).


And this is a picture of my favorite flag football player "Rhino" with his football trophy. Ryan's team got second in the tournament this year. Ryan, you are awesome!