Well, after spending the day out in the crisp, fall weather on Sunday, Helen Grace woke up stuffy last Monday morning. I gave her some Sudafed that morning and night, but by Tuesday morning, she was coughing and felt a little warm. I had a morning dermatologist appointment, so I sent her on to Grandma’s and set up an appointment for HG at the pediatrician’s office mid morning. Literally, as I put her in John’s car to go to Grandma’s, I noticed a split second of the dreaded wheeze but tried to tell myself it was no big deal- just a nasal wheeze. Unfortunately, Grandma called me later that morning at work as Helen Grace was getting a breathing treatment at the doctor’s office. Ugh, I felt like I had earned Mother of the Year Award for leaving her like that and asking Grandma to pull doctor duty. She asked Grandma where Mama was, and I know she was NOT pleased to have to do another smoky treatment. Plus, she had an ear infection. To make things even better {worse}, they’ve now put her on a daily controller inhaler and are treating it as asthma. I was terrified and truthfully had to escape to my work supply closet to have a mini meltdown. The ‘daily controller inhaler’ part made it very ‘real,’ and I have to face the music that my baby more than likely has asthma brought on by seasonal weather changes. But as my sweet friends keep reminding me, this will be a way to be proactive every day to keep us from having any more reactive trips in an ambulance. At least we are doing something to actively combat it.
The doctor sent her home with prednisone, antibiotics, and a new daily steroid inhaler and told us to continue to use her albuterol inhaler as needed. Due to our Toohig bad luck.timing, we were supposed to leave Wednesday morning for a trip to Buffalo, New York, for John’s cousin’s wedding. Helen Grace was so excited about packing her suitcase, flying on an airplane (she doesn’t remember the last time she flew when she was almost one), meeting her little cousin, Abby, and getting to see Susan get married. After a lot of denial and tears, we realized we couldn’t hop on a plane with her feeling so terrible, her ear hurting, and her not breathing well to go to a much colder part of the country. We didn’t tell her immediately of our change of plans, but we’ve slowly broken the news. Grandma bought her a wedding Barbie, and that’s seemed to make it a little easier to accept.
Wednesday and Thursday were really rough days. She was wheezing and panting a lot but super hyper due to the prednisone- never a good combination. I could get the wheezing and coughing to stop with the albuterol inhaler every four hours, but the panting took days to go away. Saturday was our first day to not use the albuterol inhaler and our first night to not wake up a million times for puffs, drink, snacks, or just play time. Zzzzz. Looks like we are finally on the way to recovery and hope to avoid any further trips to the doc with this new daily steroid inhaler.
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