Having sick kids is no fun. But having sick kids when you are also sick is downright cruel. Add to that a sick husband and a puppy who has no idea what potty training means and you can guess the kind of week I am having.
Dax and Piper have both been coughing off and on for over a month now it seems. It is like a volleyball game, one has it for a week and then passes it to the other. While we were in the After Hours over the weekend we were told that they had a virus and that is where the pink eye and the hives came from.
Hives? Oh did I not mention those? Yes, well Piper woke up on Sunday morning with a rash on her side and her neck. I didn't think too much of it until a few hours later it had spread to most of her back and the creases of her elbows and back of her knees. We gave her benadryl and enjoyed a quiet afternoon while she napped. We weren't sure what was going on and thought it could be a reaction to the eye drops that she had had the day before. As the day progressed I started to think maybe she had strep throat. Dax had strep with a very similar rash a couple of years ago. We tried to make her comfortable and decided I would take her to see the regular pediatrician first thing on Monday morning. We put the kids to bed and when Matt went to check on Piper about 2 hours later he found her covered in bright red, angry hives. I of course freaked out a little bit. I had never seen anything like it before. Perhaps the most worrisome part was that they had spread to her face as well. So at 10:30 pm Matt loaded her into the car and I took her to the After Hours clinic. We were regulars over the weekend. Doctor said it was hives and did a strep test that came back negative, thankfully. He told me to keep doing the benadryl. I told him it wasn't working so he wrote a script for a stronger antihistamine. By midnight Pi and I were home with her new meds. We gave her a dose right away and had her sleep in the big purple chair in our room. Monday she had another flare up right before the 8 hour mark for more meds, but now she is doing fine. We are going to stop meds tomorrow and see if the hives reappear.
So if you are keeping track that brings a total of 2 separate After Hours visits at $50 a pop as well as two different Rx's at $10 a piece. On Monday I had an OB appointment and my wonderful mother in law came over and stayed with my goopy eyed, hivey children. Bless her! The appointment went well but as I headed home I noticed a body ache that usually means a bad cold is settling in. By the time I was home my throat was on fire. Wonderful! Who doesn't like being 9.5 months pregnant while sick?! I also realized that my right shoulder/neck area seemed to be on fire....hmmm. Wonderful mother in law told me to go bed and rest and she would take care of dinner. Love her! I was able to get a bit of a nap in and awoke to yummy smells and Matt walking in the room. Wonderful except his first words were, "I'm sick!". Oh great! We get the kids shuttled off to bed and I set an alarm to get up at 1:30 to give Piper a dose of her medicine and then we both hit the sheets, exhausted and miserable. Alarm never goes off since I had my phone set to vibrate, but not worries, the need to vomit at 3 am woke me up. As most of you know I have horrible pregnancies where I throw up a lot! But I have not thrown up in several months now and especially not in the middle of the night. I was not sure if this was sick related or labor related as I had been having contractions since my OB appointment that afternoon. Either way it was not appreciated or wanted! We gave Piper her medicine and headed back to bed. I was awakened with the need to throw up again around 4:30, YUCK!
By Tuesday morning I was feeling awful. Throat felt like it was swollen shut, I could not move my right shoulder and I was nauseated. I bribed the kids with everything I could think of to make them get along and behave so I could lay in bed all day. We watched Alvin and the Chipmunks more times that I would like to admit and had many, many popsicles! Amazing wonderful Matt came home and fed our children and got them ready for bed while I lay in our bed pitiful and miserable. What a wonderful man he is! We did the whole bedtime routine, books, prayers, songs and cuddles and out the door. At about 11:45 Dax started to cough. The kind of cough that does not allow you to sleep. I took him some medicine and made him get up to go potty. He went back to bed and I told him to let me know if he needed me. About 10 minutes later I heard his little voice call me. I set him up in our room on the famous purple chair and he requested a throw up bucket. I ran to the kitchen (yes me huge and running, funny visual hu?) and got a tupperware dish for him to use. Poor kid threw up a ton of mucous. I felt so bad for him. The coughing just would not stop so we made Daddy scoot over and he climbed between us and we watched Alvin...again.
After last night I decided I should take him to the pediatrician to talk about this cough. I was starting to think it had more to do with his asthma than a virus. His doctor agreed and wrote us new asthma med scripts since our last round had expired. She also gave us some super strong cough medicine samples. Back to Walgreens we went to drop off two more Rx's. We ran a few errands while waiting for Dax's meds to be ready. He is now on Xopenex twice a day and Pulmicort once a day. I am hoping we will only need to do the steroids for a week at most. I hate keeping him on them for any extended period of time. It is now 3 am and he is sleeping in my room and has not coughed in the last hour and a half. I hope his little airways open up for him. Even while sick he is sweet and tender, it makes my heart that much more.
So our grand total in doctor visits and meds in the past 4 days adds up to $225. Luckily our insurance saved us a ton of money on Dax's asthma meds today but they still totaled out to $80. I just want them to feel better. Hopefully we will all join the land of the healthy soon. The idea of giving birth while sick is not appealing at all.
