Last Week

Sooooo...sorry for the silence last week. It did not play out the way I planned at all. Ha, plans. I was going to post tons of pictures and videos of the girls and share with you my Sky Mall experience. Yeah...didn't happen.

Tuesday night, Harper was running around the house, as usual, and stopped for a second to catch her breath. We noticed she was wheezing a good bit. Sounded kind of crackly. That concerned me, but they've been sick non-stop since January 5 when they started Mother's Day Out, so we thought she was maybe congested and it was just in her throat or she just hadn't hacked it out of her lungs yet. She was happy and seemed fine, so we set up the humidifier and she went to sleep just fine. About 20 minutes after our heads hit our own pillows at 10 p.m., Harper wakes up and is not happy. The rest of the night, David and I rotated every hour holding her in the recliner. She was completely miserable. She was so tired, but could not breathe. The wheezing had gotten worse. Of all things, I remembered that scene in The Nanny Diaries when the kid couldn't breathe and the mom made a steam room in the shower, so we did that with Harper. I sweated about 10 pounds off (I had a robe and slippers on...I'm like 89 years old, apparently), but it was worth it because she started breathing a little easier and went to sleep. I, of course, was freaking out. I called my parents and then the emergency after-hours number for the pediatrician. It rang and rang and while I was waiting, I checked on Harper and her breathing seemed to be less labored. I hung up the phone because she woke up again and we held her the rest of the night.

In the morning, she was wheezing so badly. Her cheeks were red. Her eyes were swollen. Her tummy and neck were retracting. She was so tired, but she was smiling and laughing a raspy little laugh. It broke my heart. I immediately called the pediatrician and they had us come in right then. They waited so patiently to see the doctor.

We may have had to bribe them with keys.

Dr. Reminds wasn't there, but Dr. Petelosiesksielosis (I swear that was his name...he was Greek, I think) saw Harper. I really liked him, too. The doctors there are great...if only they could fix the receptionists. Diagnosis: asthmatic bronchitis. I had asthma as a baby and she probably does, too. Mixed with being sick for the past 5 weeks and it just got really bad and culminated into restricted airways.

They did a breathing treatment on her. She was about as brave as a sweet, innocent, 13-month old can be. Bless her. But, she started breathing soooo much better, which was a joy to my heart. They sent us away with prescriptions for steroids to help open up her airways and an inhaler. The rest of the day, she breathed that little inhaler every four hours. The first time or two were no-gos, but then she got used to it and actually put her face forward into the mask. After 3 or 4 of the inhaler sessions, the wheezing came back. The night was the same as the night before. David and I rotated staying up with her.

The next morning, I didn't want to wait at the doctor's office again, so I called up Aunt Moo. She was working at her clinic. We headed over in the pretty snow. It's so weird...for the past three years, it's snowed. And it snowed the exact same time last year when the girls were teensy tiny. I wanted to let them go outside to walk around, but today was no time for play...we were off to get Harper breathing better.

She did another breathing treatment at Sara's office, but the afternoon didn't see her getting better. I overnighted us our own compressor nebulizer and Sara called in some medicine for the machine. It wasn't going to be in until the next day and by the time David got home Thursday night, she was not breathing great again, so we took her back to see Sara. This time, they did two breathing treatments in a row.

During which, Harper peed through her lopsided diaper in exactly the perfect place on Aunt Moo.

At least that's what Sara SAYS.

Piper and I played a game while we waited in between breathing treatments.

Harper was finally able to sleep for more than 30 minutes at a time Thursday night. The clinic also let us borrow an air machine until ours came in on Friday. We did a treatment every four hours and Friday was a much better day. She slept through the night Friday night and the rest of the weekend has been fabulous, praise the Lord.

Ha, I feel like I completely rushed through that story while giving you every single detail at the same time. "First, we did this and then we did this and then we went here and now we are doing this." Basically, Harper is doing great now and we've taken them out of daycare, doctor's orders. So, that was our week last week and why I didn't have a chance to write any new posts. I missed you guys! But now we have our own air compressor, Margo Moo (it's shaped like a cow with a barn carrying case) and dragon mask, loads of medicine, so we're set to go for the rest of the cold and flu season.

Tomorrow is Valentine's Day...I LOVE VALENTINE'S DAY!!!!!!! It's probably my second favorite holiday. I'm infatuated with it. And tomorrow is a LOVE post. Mrreow! Uh, that's not what it sounds like.