Sick Kids

Wednesday evening we returned from dinner with friends. Hannah had a temperature of 101.9 and was kinda crabby, so we credited it to teething and a cold she’d been fighting for a little while. At 2 AM Bett woke me up to say that Hannah needed to go to the Emergency room. She had woken up to Hannah crying and coughing, so she called her mom (a former nurse), and was instructed to take Hannah in.

At the hospital Roni’s suspicions were confirmed, Hannah had Croup. For those of you without kids or an intimate knowledge of the medical field, croup is the young child form of laryngitis (sp?), but because they’re smaller it’s more severe, causing difficulty breathing (kinda like athsma). The doctor at the hospital informed us Hannah was also getting an ear infection.

After Hannah got a shot of steroids (to reduce the swelling in her throat), we were on our way back home to sleep for another 1.5 hours before I had to get up for work. Hannah slept until about 11:30 or so (I think–I keep forgetting what time Bett told me). I think the steroids knocked her out, because since then she has NOT wanted to sleep. After 4.5 hours Wednesday night, I was ready to get some good sleep last night; but Hannah decided she was not going to bed – even though she couldn’t hardly keep her eyes open – and so we didn’t get to bed until around 11. And then Hannah woke up in the middle of the night; I took the first “shift”, then Bett rocked her to sleep; and then Bett did it all over again an hour later (I can sleep through a lot of things, and my wife likes to protect my sleep – bless her!).

Today for Hannah is yet another day of whining and crying; it is not a day of sleeping, eating, or drinking (much). Pray for Bett; I only need patience for the evenings, but being a mom all day is HARD WORK!

Oh. The reason this is titled Sick KidS – Eli has had sinus issues pretty much his entire life thus far, which means that even when Hannah’s healthy, Eli is crying and sniffling a lot; which keeps Bett up at night. He goes in for a sinus CT scan next Tuesday, after which hopefully we’ll find something out. He’s been seeing the chiropractor about 4 times a week, which is helping but not getting rid of it. The chiro says he has a malformed sinus cavity. Which (I think) may require surgery.

And we have a new pediatrician, that we like a LOT. She lets us be parents and doesn’t second-guess our every decision. MUCH easier to talk to and learn from than the other 4 we had taken Hannah to in our search.

Is there anybody out there?

I think James and I are about the only ones that check this site with any semblance of regularity…not that that’s all that surprising. If you consider it’s hitting 20% of its target market, that isn’t bad. Perhaps we should market it to those outside the family??? Although sites that don’t get updated frequently tend to not get visited frequently either.

On a completely different note, the slide show I referred to in my previous post has not been fixed; however, Bett did make it into an actual little book which is very cute. I think most of you have seen it. If not, well, sorry.