Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Spoke too Soon

A few weeks ago I was telling one of my co-workers how fortunate I was that Flower would be having her second birthday in a few weeks and this was the first time she had been sick….or at least sick enough to stay home from daycare.

I’ve posted a few things about Flower and Princess being sick over the last month. We had a few bouts with a stomach thing in February but I was sure March would bring healthy kids. I was wrong.

Dear Husband was out of town at a conference last week and by Saturday I decided I needed to do something fun with the girls. We have a children’s museum in town that was having a puppet show that afternoon. I told the girls if we ate our lunch and took a quick nap we would go. Princess was coughing so I knew she was coming down with a cold. I tried to assess her situation and she assured me she felt fine and really wanted to go to the puppet show. “Mommy I promise to cover my mouth when I cough! Please can we go! Please?!?!?” So we went. I figured what the heck, it seems like everywhere we’ve been lately I’ve heard other children coughing, why deprive others of our germs when they’ve been so generous to us?

We went to the children’s museum and then stopped at the carousel for a few rides, hot dogs and ice cream (I’m campaigning to be the fun parent). As we were getting in the pickup to come home Princess began to sob. She seemed fine up until that point but she really wasn’t feeling well and now that the fun stuff was over she wanted to tell me just how rotten she felt.

Fast forward three days. Flower wakes up with a cough. Princess was feeling much better, still coughing, but not as much as a few days ago. I figured Flower was getting the same cold. I headed to work and DH dropped them off at daycare. Nana picked them up from daycare and Lily didn’t sound good. Our daycare lady said she had trouble sleeping all day and the cough was worse so I called our doctor’s office. He wasn’t available so we saw a different doctor at another office that is affiliated with our regular doctor.

Two hours, an influenza test (Flower was NOT impressed with that) and a chest x-ray later the doctor decided Flower has bronchitis. She also wanted the chest films read again because it may be pneumonia. And Flower probably as RSV but since she’s almost two there’s no point in testing because it won’t change anything. Ok. As we sat in the doctor’s office last night it made me realize how important the doctor-patient relationship is. The doctor we saw last night was fine, I have no complaints and she was great with Flower, but I wasn’t accustomed to her and I didn’t get a clear picture of what was really going on despite having all my questions answered sufficiently. She gave us clear instructions on what to watch for, when to bring her back in, etc. but as was walked out the door I had to ask DH what exactly was the diagnosis because there were many possibilities.

In any case, Flower is sick again. I’m knocking back the Airborne and counting down the days until I get it.

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