Deja Sick

We have had the flu before, we have had to do breathing treatments before, and we have been battling a few potty *issues* for a while now. Since this weekend, we have been battling ALL THREE AT ONCE.

Gabby had a really rough day on Sunday. She hardly slept on Saturday night, and we were up and down with her the entire night. Sunday morning she woke up cranky, and soon after I noticed she was wheezing again. She didn't want to get up, and once up, she didn't want to sit up or walk around...just wanted to stay curled up in a ball on the floor. We figured the crankiness and wanting to stay hunched over was from constipation...our stubborn little girl had not pooped since TUESDAY. She is amazingly adept at holding poop, and is extremely strong-willed. Usually, we figure it has to come out at some point, and it does (after several days), and the cycle starts again. This time, she needed a little extra help.

We called our doctor, and he suggested we give her a suppository to give her some immediate relief, and then start her on a daily dose of Miralax. He also said that if we could get our hands on a nebulizer, that we could go ahead and do a breathing treatment with our leftover albuterol to help get her wheezing under control until we could take her in to Acute Kids (they don't open until noon, and we were trying to make it through the morning to avoid an ER visit). It is NOT easy to find a nebulizer on a Sunday morning, since they are usually only sold through pharmacies. Luckily, the CVS down the street from us had one in stock, and as soon as the pharmacy opened at 10, David was able to run over and pick it up. The whole morning was so stressful...not wanting to go to the ER, but also not wanting to be careless, trying to figure out what the best thing to do was, all the while with Gabby fussing and wheezing. I was so relieved when David walked in the door with the nebulizer and our anti-constipation supplies.

Have any of you had to give your kids suppositories yet? It was traumatic for all three of us. But Gabby got some immediate relief, and it calmed her down a bit. The breathing treatment didn't make a huge difference, but it was enough that I definitely felt OK about waiting until noon to get to Acute Kids.

But then, as we were getting ready to leave, Gabby got upset again and started crying HARD. I was holding her trying to calm her down...it didn't work, and she vomited ALL OVER ME. On my face, in my hair, soaking through my shirt, THROUGH MY BRA, it was bad. We had been pumping her full of prune juice and fiber all weekend, so I was covered with what smelled like fermented prune juice, and bits of oranges and oats. So David grabbed her and she went straight into the tub; I jumped into the shower. We didn't get into the car until almost 1, and Gabby fell asleep within about 30 seconds of pulling out of the driveway. Luckily there were two of us, so David waited in the waiting room while I stayed in the car with a napping Gabby.

By the time we made it into the exam room, Gabby's tummy was hurting so bad again, I could barely answer the doctor's questions with all the wailing going on. She said that Gabby was getting enough oxygen that we could take care of the tummy issues first. They gave her an enema (another traumatic experience) but it DID get things moving, and Gabby was feeling way better afterwards, although still wheezing like crazy.

Finally at 3:00, she was able to get her breathing treatment. Gabby did have a low fever, so almost as an afterthought, the doctor decided to test for flu. I was CONVINCED she wasn't going to have it...yes she was wheezing, but she wheezed last time she had a little chest cold. Yes, she threw up, but I thought it was from all the crying. And yes, she had a fever, but really, I didn't even realize she had a fever until they took her temperature since all morning we had been preoccupied with the constipation and the wheezing.

So...yes, she has the flu. Pretty sure it is H1N1, since the doctor said that they haven't been seeing seasonal flu yet. She is doing breathing treatments every 4 hours around the clock. Last time we only had to do every 4 hours during the day...this time we have to wake her up twice at night. Although they still haven't diagnosed her officially with asthma, the doctor said that for now we will call it asthma...because that is an underlying health issue, which means she was allowed to prescribe Tamiflu. We are continuing with the Miralax each day until she is pooping regularly for a week...then we can start to back off a little and only use as needed. Apparently, holding in your poop is a pretty big issue in the toddler world...and it can lead to serious health problems and even surgery. So far we are doing really well with the Miralax, so hopefully that will give her the boost she needs to get into a good habit, and she won't be chronically constipated.

We didn't get home on Sunday until almost 5pm. That day Gabby had 4 breathing treatments, she threw up, had a q-tip shoved up her nose, a suppository shoved in her hiney, an enema, 3 massive poops (a lot stacks up in 5 days), spent over 3 hours at the doctor, got only about 2o minutes of a nap after having only a few hours of sleep the night before, and must have just felt yucky all through that.

However, things have been smooth sailing since Sunday. I was worried about Gabby getting enough sleep with us having to wake her twice a night for breathing treatments. She has been AWESOME. She wakes up, puts on her mask, and sits happily for 15 minutes while we read books, watch Oswald, and talk. She is cheerful, funny, silly, and good natured about the whole thing. And then when it is over, despite being WIDE AWAKE, she curls back up without a fight, and quickly falls back asleep. I was worried about her getting enough to eat...last time she had the flu, she didn't want to eat or drink ANYTHING. And now with the constipation, we have to be really selective about what she eats, and a lot of the things we might turn to when she's sick and not feeling like eating (crackers, ice cream, cheese) need to be limited. But she has had a decent appetite, and we haven't had a problem getting her to eat good, non-binding foods.

And really, Gabby hasn't even seemed sick since Sunday. When we woke her up at 3 in the morning on Sunday night, she was warm again so she got a dose of Motrin. We haven't had to give her anything else for fever since then...temp has been normal since she woke up on Monday morning. She eats, drinks, sleeps, and is in a fabulous mood. David stayed home with her Monday and Tuesday, and she ran him pretty ragged...the albuterol makes you hyper, and Gabby was literally racing around the house most of the day...he couldn't get her to stop moving. The pedi told us we could go back to daycare after 24 hours without fever...tomorrow we will be almost 60 hours without fever, so she should be more than healthy enough to go back to Pattie's.

Here is our abnormally cheerful kid, considering it is 3 a.m. and we have woken her up for the SECOND TIME last night for a breathing treatment.