'Quit Being So Dramatic!'

This is what I said to One at 1:30 a.m. Tuesday night. She's had a cough for a couple of days and hasn't been able to sleep. Now, granted, this cough has been a bugger. It doesn't sound horrible, but if she starts, she just can't stop. She coughs so hard and so much that she vomits and/or her nose will start spraying blood. She is also typically a very energetic and enthusiastic child who hasn't left the couch for five days.

As I type this I feel like an even bigger loser. Good grief!

Tuesday night she hadn't been to sleep yet and I was really wanting to be asleep, so I credit my lack of compassion to sleep deprived delirium. She was freaking out saying to me that she couldn't breathe. I know, I know. Not a shining mommy moment.

Fast forward to the next morning when I was a little more coherent and compassionate, but not much. I decided to take her to the doctor hoping for a prescription cough suppressant so that she (and I, let's face it, I was being selfish) could sleep the next night.

I was soooo not concerned with her 'illness' that while the doctor was giving her the exam I sat on the bench answering questions while reading the latest 'Reader's Digest.' (Oh my gosh! I am horrible!)

As I realized the appointment was about to come to an end, I stood up and put my purse on my shoulder, waiting for the doc to hand me a scrip. Instead she very seriously said to me that we needed to go right over to the lab and have an X-ray of One's chest done, a snot culture, and some blood work. I need to add really quick that we have just changed pediatricians, our last one lived over an hour and a half away and that was just not working out so well. This new doctor had just seen Four for her kindergarten well child visit and this was our first 'sick' child so I truly and honestly thought that she was just being 'extra careful' as this was her first interaction with us having an illness. So basically, I STILL thought that nothing was wrong!

Until the lab tech asked us to wait before leaving the room while she made sure the X-ray had taken a good picture. And that's when I saw the film come across the screen and saw a partially white left lung. FYI, lungs are not supposed to be white. That means there is either something in there that shouldn't be or that it is not filled with air as it should be or both.

And then I said, 'Hey, One, sorry about last night.'

Great apology, I know.

So, basically, One has pneumonia, her oxygen levels are okay but she is on restricted activity (no problems there, she wasn't really doing anything anyhow. This also explains the extreme and unusual lethargy she was experiencing...). There is also a small chance that she has a strain of whooping cough. She was immunized for it, but evidently there have been a couple of cases of it at her school recently (how I don't know this is a bit of a mystery! I thought that was a pretty big deal, you know the kind of thing you'd hear about) and so there is a chance that she has some form of it. She is being treated for both and we'll know tomorrow or Monday about the whooping cough for sure. In the meantime, she is 'quarantined' (our word, not the doctor's) to the piano room so that nobody else gets this (as if we could suddenly protect ourselves after having her lay on the couch in the living room for the past five days).

Amazingly she has only asked for a slushy twice. She must not realize that now is the time to ask for a horse.