Just Breathe

This week was full of "difficulty breathing" here in this house. It started out with Renee coughing on Monday that kept her home from school. Then Tuesday Kaylee started with the cough and it was bad enough to keep her home too. Instead of getting better each day it got worse. I knew something was different about this cough, it wasn't the normal "cough" that I have heard them have before. It had an expiratory wheeze to it and took their breathe away for 15-20 mins. Tuesday night was a bad night. Really bad. Their cough was soo bad that it would come on instantly and take their breathe away for 20 minutes or so. We tried everything to help it, cough medicine, sleeping elevated, humidifier, steam shower, drinking water. Well the cough was so bad that it would make them throw up, and IF we were lucky we made it to the bathroom. Otherwise I was changing a lot of sheets through out the night. So from 2am to 7am I was literally in the girls room with them trying to help them breathe or clean up the after effects from what their cough did to them. I woke Joe up at 7 telling him that I was just crawling into bed now and if he could get Ryan ready and off to school for me so I could try to sleep a little. He was so great to do that for me.
I took them to the doctor that day because I knew this wasn't your average cold, and I did not want to repeat a night like that again. Turned out that Kaylee had an ear infection and needed meds, and the girls both needed a stronger cough medicine and a breathing treatment.
I went to the Pharmacy and they needed time to fill the prescriptions and they said it was going to take about 20 minutes because they had to input both girls as new patients. So I said I would have to come back later because I wasn't going to wait in the Pharmacy while the kids picked out the toys and candy they wanted but I would not buy them. So I headed home to have rest time and watch a movie. Well we cuddled on the couch and within minutes Kaylee was snoring and cuddled with me (which this is the only good part of sick kids!) and about 45 mins later Renee crawled up on my other side of my lap and open arm and instantly fell asleep. It's been a long time since I've had both of them sleep on me for a LONG time.
Then I got a call from our Pharmacist in town letting me know that the prescriptions were ready and that she could send her tech to come deliver them to me since I was home alone with sick kids. Wow! That would never happen in Phoenix! Or California. So she brought me all my meds and my new nebulizer machine.
So we now own a nebulizer machine and that has literally been a "lifesaver." We had to give Kaylee treatment after treatment the first night, and it still wasn't helping, I was at the point where I just going to take her to the hospital because there was nothing else we could do at home, and she was struggling to breathe so bad that it was scary. We first called our Home teachers and he came over and assisted Joe in laying their hands on her head for a Priesthood blessing. The power of that blessing and prayer was so strong that moments after the blessing she was able to breath and she fell right to sleep and slept most of the night without another cough out of her. It was amazing!!
I kept the girls home one more day although their cough seemed to of improved tremendously over night, they needed the rest and recovery. They did have some coughing fits during the day that needed my attention and help with. Although they did feel a lot better, they were (well Kaylee was) super tired and that made for some really bad behavior. More tantrums thrown that day than in her whole life. It was a very long day for all of us. Thankfully we all made it through alive and breathing. Thanks to daddy coming home at the end of the day to help.
They actually slept through the night with out coughing at all and woke up Friday morning with hardly any coughing in the morning. And they woke up happy!! So we had a great morning, got ready for SCHOOL!! So mommy got here first nap of the whole week, it was so wonderful. and so needed.
One breathe at a time, got me through this week and thankfully we are all still breathing!
Just breathe!! it's really important