Seriously

I'm actually kind of embarrassed to post this picture.

That picture is all of the medicines Emily and Lucy are taking right now.

In no particular order they are:
- Zyrtec (both Em & Lucy)
- Rhinocort (Emily)
- Flovent inhaler (both)
- Prevacid (both)
- Singulair (Lucy)
- Tobrimycin (both)
- gummy vitamin (Emily)
- vitamin with fluoride (Lucy)
- Amoxicillin (Emily)
- Orapred (Emily)
- Omnicef (Lucy)
- Albuterol nebulizer solution (Emily)
- Pulmicort neb solution (both)
- Xopinex neb solution (Lucy)
- Tylenol (both)
- Motrin (both)

Obviously some of these are temporary measures for while the girls are sick. They currently have ear infections (both ears, both girls) and eye infections. Emily also raised the stakes Sunday night by developing a pretty decent case of croup to go along with everything else. We went to the pediatrician and got the Orapred yesterday afternoon.

Last night, we gave the girls their bed time nebs at 7-ish. At 11, Emily was coughing and starting with the croup stridor (that barky gaspy noise when she inhaled - ugh). I gave her two puffs of her albuterol inhaler, hoping that she'd settle down and be OK.

Not so much.

At 11:30, she was still coughing and doing the stridor thing, so I pulled her out of bed and gave her a neb. Well, after she puked all over herself and me. Awesome.

I also called the night nurse at the doctor's office. They told me I was doing OK with the treatments so far and if she needed another neb in the next 4 hours, she should be seen by a doctor.

Fine. The neb was finished, so we went back to bed.

And I was jolted awake at 1 am by the sounds of more coughing. And more stridor.

I got Em up and gave her another neb and got dressed to head to the hospital.

A more healthy child has never been seen by that hospital, I'm sure.

Between the albuterol neb and the cold air in the car on the way to the hospital, not to mention the sitting upright for 35 minutes, Emily was breathing completely normally when we got to the ED. She asked a million questions, agreed to let the nurse check her pulse ox with the little finger monitor thing, and I told the story of my awesome night with the coughing, puking kid 18 times.

We were pronounced heathly and sent home at 3 am. If we hadn't just started the Orapred, we would have been given another kind of oral steroid, but since she'd had Orapred that night, more wasn't necessary.

Mike was incredibly great through this whole thing. He stayed home with Lucy, had the presence of mind to email his boss at 1 am to say he wouldn't be in to work right away and then got up with Lucy at 6:45. He kept Lucy quiet and entertained while Em and I slept, without resorting to duct tape. I woke up at 9 and decided I was more or less ready to face the day.

I am incredibly frustrated about the health of my kids. It seems like they are ALWAYS sick. Lucy had 6 DAYS between antibiotic prescriptions. She finished a round of Augmentin on Feb 8 and then was put on the Omnicef on Feb 14.

It's getting to the point where I feel as though I must be doing something wrong for them to always be falling sick. I know that isn't the case, but when you spend nearly $6000* in one year on medical expenses, you start to feel like that. *That's for everyone in the family and includes the 18,000 trips I made to specialists last year.

I talked with Dr.Sara about this while I was there yesterday and she is not as concerned as I am. She agreed that they seem to be sick frequently, but also reminded me that they have asthma and that increases their chances of going into these types of episodes.

Lucky, lucky us.

I scheduled a consultation with Dr.Sara for April 1. We're going to sit down and talk through the winter season and the various sicknesses we encountered and see if there is a pattern, something that should be addressed further or something we (I) could be doing better to prevent this from continuing.

Because I am really tired of it. And it can't be any more fun for the girls to go through. I can only imagine how scary it is to feel like you can't breathe. Or to cough so much that you throw up. At the very least, you'd think their tummy muscles would hurt. My poor noodles.

Now I am going to spend the afternoon playing catch-up. I have a ton of laundry waiting for me and a kitchen that is in dire need of some love. And a feed reader that has 125 unread posts. And a bunch of unwatched episodes of West Wing Season 5. And no desire to heave my buns off the couch to go do anything.

Ok, here we go. 1, 2, 3 ... HEAVE!