What it looks like at my house

Outside, 5 new inches of snow, made crusty by freezing rain.

Inside, we are ready for this morning's breathing program and meds.

Nebulizers, inhalers, vaporizers, antibiotics, steroids and cough medicines, oh my. The stuff in the baggie on the right is the never mind/didn't work stuff, which combined cost slightly more than the orange inhaler, which costs - after insurance - $230 per tube, which is the winner in the You Have Got to Be Kidding Me category. A close second is antibiotic 2 of 3, which rang in at $170 dollars because there is no generic. All told, you're looking at just under $1000 in prescription medicines from the last 12 days, who knows what the doctors bills will be. But get this - we have Blue Cross Blue Shield insurance, which we pay for, because we are self employed and self insured small business owners who are supposed to save the depressed economy. Hah. I would like to pass a job killing bill to fire some ignorant politicians if I were able.

But here's the thing. The money part is irrelevant in the big picture. She is not better. At all. No change, two weeks later. Today we go to the hospital lab to get swabbed for whooping cough because it's going around. Even immunized kids are getting it. But I'm thinking this is not whooping cough. It doesn't fit. But nothing else fits either and what do I know besides what I read online. Three doctors and a pulmonary specialist have no other ideas to stop the non-stop coughing - and by non-stop I mean every thirty seconds or less, all day and whenever she stirs at night. Poor thing is sore and hoarse and cranky. I'm helpless and clueless. I just try to keep little girl from going crazy from both the coughing and the boredom and hope time heals whatever the hell this is.

That's the news from here. Nothing good except that things could be worse and thank goodness they aren't. I read online about people breaking ribs from coughing, coughing like this for months, a hundred days. My girl, who is not so little any more has had episodes like this for the past 5 years, as her lungs take great offense to viral invaders, but she's always gotten better within days of treatment. Now we are into weeks and likely immuno -suppressed from the steroids and I am living in high alert mode, scared she's missed so much school and equally terrified to throw her back into the germ pool. I want to bubble wrap her and keep her safe, once I get her well.

And so it goes this winter at my house. Stay well out there. And thanks for listening to me whine.

Again.

What it sounds like at my house

Cough cough. Cough cough. Cough cough cough.

For 8 straight days and most of the nights.

My 100 pound, 13 year old daughter had a sore throat last week.

Two days later she started coughing. Non stop. Until she gags and retches.

We've had xrays, doctor visits, inhalers, steroids, two antibiotics, every cough syrup they make, with and without codeine, steam baths, controlled breathing, vaporizers, back rubs, you name it, nothing works. Nothing.

Eight days later she is still coughing non stop. A week of school missed, with midterms looming. No appetite, no energy, little rest, sore muscles, no voice.

It is the hardest thing I do as a mother, to try and stay calm, to reassure myself that there is nothing else that we can do but wait, and to be vigilant that she is getting enough oxygen and has no fever. But I am at DefCon 4, Orange Alert, and I have listened to her cough so long I can barely stand it.

Which makes me feel awful, because I can't imagine what she feels like.

Official diagnosis, pnuemonia, organism unspecified, acute bronchitis and cough.

We've been here many times before, but this is the worst bout yet. I'm trying to see through this and visualize her breathing easy, and sleeping. She keeps saying I'm sorry, Mommy, and that makes me feel awful too.

I give it two more days then I'm planning on freaking out. I'm hoping the new antibiotic can keep me from going there.

I don't know how moms with chronic, very ill children do it, I just don't. I never knew how weak and worthless and helpless I really was until I became a mom. I guess everyone just does what they have to, even if that means just leaving the room for a minute so you don't have to hear your child suffer, so you can come back in and offer what feeble comfort there is to give.

So far, I'm not liking this year at all. And I wasn't that fond of last year.

So that's what it sounds like at my house. Cough cough. Cough cough cough.

Cough, cough. Cough cough. Cough cough cough cough cough .... aaaargh.