Sick

So remember how Hudson was not on his best behavior last week, and how I was hoping it was teething? 

Yeah.  It wasn't.

The behavior continued throughout the week and then on Friday afternoon I put Hudson down for his nap and he woke up to a coughing fit 45 minutes later.  Sometimes when his nose runs a little (which it had been doing for a couple of days), it leads to coughing when he's lying down, and those things usually happen when he's teething, so I continued to think maybe that was the explanation.  But then as the day wore on his cough got worse.  Much worse.

He coughed through most of the night, but somehow managed to sleep through it.  Then he woke up at 4:30 am Saturday throwing up.  Never a fun thing to deal with, but I woke J up to help me and he changed the sheet while I got H cleaned up.  Just one of many moments when I am thankful for my husband and wonder how on earth single parents ever do it.  H was pretty worked up and still coughing a lot, but after about an hour he finally fell back asleep.

J gets up with him every Saturday morning and this day was no exception.  Well, except that instead of getting a couple of much-needed extra hours of sleep, I heard H crying non-stop so I got up too.  Hudson did not seem well at all.  He refused to eat anything which is highly unusual for him (hello, you don't get to the 95th percentile by skipping lots of meals).  He wouldn't talk at all and was just crying and making these pitiful whiny noises.  Then he was making this grunting sound that sounded almost like he was either suppressing or trying to force a cough.  It was strange.  But after a few minutes we decided that he wasn't intentionally making the sound - that was the sound of his breathing.  Not good.

It didn't seem like he was struggling to breathe, just that his breaths were making those strange sounds.  So we threw on some clothes and headed out to urgent care.  It was 3 hours before a home game in our beautiful college town (I love living in a city where there is only bad traffic 6 days a year and it is highly predictable), so we went to the place that was outside of town instead of trying to get into town with tens of thousands of other people.

Only before we ever got out of the garage, H starting throwing up again.  Massively.  All over himself, the car seat, and the car. 

Then some sort of mom-instinct kicked in.  It was strange.  While J stood behind the car gagging, I ran inside and got towels, stripped H down, and cleaned him up.  Once we were ready to go again, we decided to take the other car in order to avoid the wet (from cleaner) car seat and the stench.

About 10 minutes down the road, we were discussing how it was so much better that he threw up when we were still at home and not on the way there when...you guessed it....he tosses it again.  In the other car.  On the other car seat.  Wonderful.

This time I had at least brought towels so I was able to catch most of it in a towel.  Pleasant picture, no?

When we got there they pretty much took us right back because of how his breathing sounded, and the nurse warned us we might need to go to the ER instead.  You know, the one that was 30 minutes in the other direction on a normal day - with game day traffic in between.  That sounded really bad on so many levels.

Fortunately the doctor didn't think an ER visit was necessary.  But we did have to do a couple of nose swabs, a chest x-ray, and a breathing treatment.  His breathing sounded so much better after the treatment so I relaxed a little after that.  The doctor came back and told us that it was bronchitis and probably a little bit of pneumonia.  Can I just say that adding "a little" in front of "pneumonia" does not do much to sooth a mommy's worries?

Then he had to get 2 really terrifying-looking shots and we were given 2 prescriptions, asked to come back in the morning, and sent home. 

His breathing seemed improved the rest of the day, but he clearly was not feeling well.  Erika and Matt, awesome friends that they are, brought us some pizza for dinner and hung out with us to watch (surprisingly boring) football last night, which was the high point of the weekend.  Amazingly H managed to sleep through the night and I am so grateful for that. Unfortunately, he was up at 5:15 this morning.  I will not repeat my rant about the time change, but you can guess how I felt about that.  A sick child is not so bad that I can't still be bitter about something I have no control over whatsoever.

Four hours later when the office finally opened, we headed back out to see the doctor.  He confirmed that it's pneumonia along with the bronchitis and he was not thrilled with how Hudson's breathing sounded and decided to give him another breathing treatment.  But since H did seem slightly better today, we were sent home instead of to the hospital, so I considered that a small win. 

Hopefully he'll get a little better each day now, but we are watching him closely for trouble breathing until that happens.  I have been so thankful for Hudson's health for the last 2 years.  He has never had more than a minor cold that was gone in 2 days.  While this has been a worrisome and exhausting weekend, it has reminded me how easy I've had it thus far in his life and how relatively minor a small bout of pneumonia really is compared to all the parents dealing with children with real, long-term illnesses.  Always good to keep things in perspective, I think, but I am still praying for a speedy recovery for my sweet, pitiful boy.  And I hope your weekend was much more fun than mine.



~MG