Oh what a night

Thursday night, both girls started coughing. A little stuffiness to the noses, but nothing worrisome. They coughed all night. Cough meds didn't touch it. I propped myself up in bed with a girl on each shoulder because they did much better upright. They coughed, but managed to stay asleep through it most of the night. I didn't.

Friday morning, still just coughing, a bit of stuffiness, but their lungs sounded clear. Sarah occasionally seemed to breath rapidly, but nothing else. Except that feeling. If you're a mom, you understand. It seemed silly to see a doctor over a cough. Plus, we have no insurance until March. And the weather was nasty enough to close our walk-in clinic early anyway. That evening, Sarah Grace started breathing noticeably faster. Laying her down, we saw her chest sinking as she breathed. Honor was starting to wheeze. Suddenly, not just a cough anymore. We packed up and headed to the hospital an hour away, but the roads were covered. We drove for over an hour on a trip that usually takes 15-20 minutes before deciding it was too dangerous to keep going. We could not see the road at all, but were using that loud buzzing noise, from going onto the side of the road, to help us know where the edge was. The cold air had helped the girls somewhat so we traveled another hour home to start breathing treatments and cold meds and alternating steamy bathrooms with the cold back porch. It was a long night, but we made it.

Thank the Lord, our local clinic was open this morning. The girls have "asthmatic bronchitis". That's a new one for me. They are on lots of different, yucky medicines which include antibiotics. Honor's eczema just cleared up from her last round of antibiotics months ago. I'm not looking forward to this. Nor to remembering their doses. I have to use an incredible amount of mental energy to remember to give my kids 10 days of antibiotics. Isn't that terrible? 5 days? No problem. Past that, they're healthy again and it starts slipping my mind. That's bad. My adorably geeky, lab-tech hubby has preached to me many times the evils of encouraging relapses and antibiotic resistance. Yet I still struggle to remember.

Anyway, within an hour of their new meds, the girls were doing great and you'd never know the torture they put us through last night. But, as awful as it was and as tired as I am after two nights of this, there is no way in the world I would trade it with anyone. That is not a privilege I could hand over to anyone.

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