Whirl Wind Trip

We have had a busy couple of days! Last week we ended up making a spur-of-the-moment trip up north for a funeral. The daughter of some friends of our died, so we decided to go up. I have never been to a funeral for a baby before, it definitely has a different tone to it than a funeral for someone who was old. It was a beautiful funeral, I am glad to have the gospel in our lives to know what on the other side. It seems to help cope with the loss. The family knew it was coming, but it was definitely still hard. It was good for us to go up there for a couple days and see family and friends. It's getting harder and harder to make the trip for a lot of reasons. This may also be our last trip up for the year. Bo is pretty busy during the holidays, so we will probably be spending them here. I took my camera with us, but didn't take any pictures.

We came home on Sunday and got here pretty late. Boo had fallen asleep in the car, about 20 minutes away from getting home of course. We got here, unloaded what we needed for the night and morning and left the rest to be dealt with later. It was pretty cold and windy up north, and I thought we had kept Boo bundled so she wouldn't get sick. She ended up getting congested on Sunday morning, but we thought it was just a runny nose. Since she was asleep in the car when we got home, she stayed asleep while we moved her to her own bed. Bo was exhausted from the trip and long weekend that he crashed as soon as he hit the pillow, I, on the other hand stayed up reading before I felt tired enough to go to sleep. I read for about an hour and finally was able to drift into what I was hoping to be a peaceful night sleep. It wasn't even an hour later that I was woken to coughing and gasping. I immediately went in to "mom mode" and checked Boo, told her to sit up, and I went for her medicine box. Boo has gotten croup about 5 times now, and the last time she got it which was about 6 months ago the doctor was nice enough to give me a double dose of medicine so I could have some on hand for the next time she came down with it. Croup has a nasty habit of showing up at night time when of course the doctors are at home tucked nicely into their beds. We've learned how to deal with it, but it has been a nice reassurance to have the medicine on hand. Usually for croup, you can take the child into a steamy shower and the croup will almost instantly let up. The wheezing will go away, the coughing will stop, and the child will feel better... that is until you get out of the shower and then the symptoms will slowly creep back. Sunday night, rather, Monday morning was different. We stripped her down, and put her in the shower, but she didn't get better. Croup is also known for the wheezing sound and the barking cough, which after a few minutes we noticed that she didn't have. She was coughing, but then was gasping afterwards just to breathe. She literally sounded like she was about to suffocate. I believe if we wouldn't have acted, she would've suffocated, it was really that bad. We gave her the croup medicine but that also didn't help. Her chest didn't even seem to be expanding during her gasping for air. She then started to complain and get really angry because she no longer wanted to be in the hot shower. I kept thinking to myself, "this isn't working! What do we do?!". It didn't really help that we had just returned from a funeral for a child, so of course I'm extra paranoid. We decided it would be better safe than sorry and took her to the emergency room. So it's almost 1:00 in the morning, we are exhausted, and now completely worried that there is something wrong with our child, and she is annoyed at us because all she wants to do is sleep. The doctor and nurses inspected her, asked questions, checked her more, asked more questions, and then left us. Boo was laying on the table wondering what was going on, fading in and out of sleep and being annoyed at the nurses that kept coming and touching her. They took blood, took an x-ray, gave her oxygen, and 2 breathing treatments. The nurses were really impressed with Boo, she didn't even cry when they took her blood, I think it was because she was mostly asleep. After about 2 and half hours of being there the doctor came to talk to us. His diagnosis, unsure. It was either an asthmatic reaction to... something, or a virus, either way the croup medicine was what we were to continue giving her along with more breathing treatments as needed. The other bad thing about Boo's timing on getting sick, we still had to go home, worry about her making it through the night before we could get to the pharmacy to fill her prescriptions. We went home, and of course she used the excuse of going the hospital to land a spot sleeping in our bed, which led to a bad rest of the night sleep for both of us, but mostly me. Bo can sleep through anything, me on the other hand, heard every breathe of air she was working so hard to get and every little cough. Bo called in sick to work on Monday being that he only got about 4 hours sleep, and he knew I hadn't slept at all. I let him sleep in while I watched shows with Boo waiting for the pharmacy to open. The doctor had given us a prescription for a nebulizer so that we could give her the breathing treatments. I got to the store to turn in the prescriptions, and the lady at the counter informed me that that's not where I would get one of those and that they didn't have any and that they would have to order one. What! Are you kidding me! So she then walks over to the pharmacist, talks for a minute, and then walks back with one in her hands. So... you don't have one?... or you were just too lazy to check?... Are you getting paid to stand back there and give me wrong information? I hate stupid people! They did inform me that my insurance wasn't going to pay for the nebulizer, so I'm thinking to myself, "How much? I can't afford to buy a $400 machine!" So I timidly ask, not wanting to really know the answer, how much it costs. The pharmacist punches some numbers into a calculator, pauses for a minute to think, punches some more, and then turns to me and says "It's going to run you $41.49". What?! Really? Okay, Sold! I went home, administered a treatment and then Bo let me take a nap. I hadn't realized how tired I was until I laid down and immediately went to sleep, I really needed that nap. Boo is feeling better, still coughs and has to catch her breath, but is doing better. She fights me every time we have to do a breathing treatment, or to take her medicine. She tells me constantly that she is better because she wants to go outside or go to Olivia's house. Hopefully she's better before Friday, she would hate to miss Halloween. She's going to be Cinderella, are you surprised?