Winter Wrap Up

I went to the pediatrician's office today without my children.

Today was my meeting to discuss the past winter. I wanted to come out of there with a list of the number of times the girls had ear infections, pneumonia and antibiotic prescriptions as well as a game plan for next winter.

Emily has had 5 ear infections and 1 bout of pneumonia. She had antibiotics 6 times since last January. The biggest decision we made for Em today was to get her to an ENT (again) for tubes. If we were to remove the ear infection component of Emily's past winter, we would have only had ONE major, antibiotic-requiring illness and that's something I can totally get behind. We also revamped her medicines and went over a she's-coughing-and-it's-late-at-night game plan.

Lucy had 3 ear infections and 3 bouts of pneumonia. She was on antibiotics 9 times since last January. We are going to hold off on tubes for Lucy at this point. Dr Sara's threshold is 5 infections in a year. However, if Lucy comes down with another case of pneumonia before the end of the year, we will run some blood work to investigate the function of her immune system. 3 times in a year is a lot for pneumonia. We also reviewed Lucy's medicines and made some changes there, too.

I really enjoyed the opportunity to sit down with Dr Sara and go over this data. I wrote down every single visit the girls had between January of last year and today and it was illuminating. I wasn't imagining it; they really were there ALL THE TIME. There were so many cases of April 2, April 6, April 9 visit series it was crazy. Dr Sara also said that the meeting was helpful for her. She was able to analyze the data and look for patterns to the girls' illnesses, which was helpful. We discovered that Emily tends to get sick A LOT during the summer (of all stinkin' times), while Lucy has been more sick in the winter.

I am sstill working to come to terms with the fact that Emily needs to have tubes. I know that it is a beneficial thing for her and GOD, do I ever want her to stop being sick all the time, but it's still surgery on my baaay-beee and it freaks me out. I've been semi sick to my stomach ever since Dr Sara said she wanted her to get tubes. Logically I understand all of the reasons, but emotionally, I'm trying not to freak out. I'm hoping that talking with the ENT tomorrow will help settle me down somewhat. Of course, I wanted to call today, but my appointment with Dr Sara wasn't until 4:30. I didn't leave the office until 5:45! Amazing. We talked about the kids for OVER an hour.

We also decided that I wouldn't take the girls back to the allergist for a while. I don't think that the allergist, Dr K, has been adding much of anything to the conversation about the girls. Add to that the $30 copays, and her tendency to perpetually add medicines (including one that I discovered today isn't actually approved for children. Emily has been on it since she was 18 months old. AWESOME) without any end dates or discussion of the medicine's effectiveness. We'll go back to the allergist if Dr Sara and I think that the girls need or will benefit from allergy shots, but that's going to be a while. Emily is only just old enough for allergy shots now and I do not want to go there with her for that right now. I don't think that her problems are stemming from allergies. We'll see how we do after the tubes go in.

I have no logical plan for how to wrap up this post. I guess I'll just stop writing like I always do.