It’s been a wild couple of weeks for us, again. Look below to bring you up to speed. That was Sunday. On Monday she still wasn’t showing any signs of improvement so I took her to her pediatrician again. She gave her another steroid shot and put her on pulmicort- an inhaled steroid.  She said she should show signs of improvement by tomorrow, but if not, bring her in.

happy during breathing treatments

Tuesday morning rolled around and there was a  couple of minutes where I was about to call an ambulance if I couldn’t get her lungs to open up. Fortunately the asthma medicine finally started to work and she wasn’t breathing as horribly. She threw up her first two bottles of the day and then stopped eating all together. A very bad sign. It meant her body was so tired out from just trying to keep enough oxygen in it that she didn’t want to do anything else. She was still happy, she’s always happy, but just gave up eating. Which is kind of funny to me. Her joy is the last thing to go when she gets sick.  So back to the pediatrician again. I saw the doctor this time instead of our nurse practitioner (who is great, but I think the Down syndrome might be a little over her head).  They did an RSV test that came back negative. It still could be some other virus causing her bronchialitus. The doctor said that if she didn’t start getting enough fluids in again that she’d have to be hospitalized. I spent the rest of the afternoon trying to force in pedialite and formula and was only to get in 4 ounces. 4 ounces held down in almost 20 hours was not enough. So the pediatrician called Mary Bridge Children’s hospital in Tacoma where they said they were going to admit her.

I’ll be honest. I sort of freaked out. Maybe it was because I had worked so hard to try to get fluids in her, or maybe it was because I was scared. My hands started to shake and my mind blanked out on what I needed to do next. Last time Abby got to the point where she wouldn’t eat things went downhill REALLY fast from there. I was so worried that this would be the case again. So I prayed. Then, of course, I called my mom. She’s on a mission right now in Palmyra. Mom calmed me down a lot. I’ve said before, I know when she’s praying for me. And I knew that as soon as she hung up the phone that’s what she was doing. Because I came to my senses again. I called Heather J. and got together the rest of the stuff we needed. I sent Peyton over to Amy N.’s house. Peyton loves her son and we had to keep him and Casey separate or someone wouldn’t have survived the night. I posted to facebook as well. This is another thing that is amazing to me. How quickly the word can get out and how good my friends and family are at praying for us. We needed it last night.

And this time, the prayers worked quickly.

We got to the hospital and they admitted us through the E.R. to run some tests. The first set of doctors and nurses came in and were very concerned because her wheezing was so bad even after all of the steroids and albuterol. But she was getting enough oxygen, so the biggest concern was that she had quit eating. We had a different nurse come in and take a look at her and say that she was going to suck out her nose. I kind of rolled my eyes at that because I’d been squirting saline and sucking out her nose every couple of hours. I was sure that she’d only have a little bit of crud in there. She hooked up this awesome vacuum sucker thing and layed Abby on the bed with her head towards the end and then kneeled down on the opposite side and went to town on her poor little nose. She really squirted the saline up there while sucking out the other side. Abby looked as if we were waterboarding her. It was AWFUL! But she got so much junk out it was amazing. Abby’ airways are teeny tiny so I guess when she gets clogged up she REALLY gets clogged up. After that Lance wrapped her up and tried feeding her again. In the next half hour she took four ounces! The doctors came in, were pleased with all of that and sent us on our way.

They think it’s still some sort of virus that is causing her lung issues. There are a few other issues that aren’t off the table, but we’re hoping that she’ll just start to get better and we won’t have to go down those roads.  With Abby, she has a cruddy immune system and no reserves, so when she gets sick, she gets really sick and then is unable to fight it for a long time. At this point, she can’t get sick again with anything else. It would land her back in the hospital. So, we’re keeping her home as much as possible. I’ve got to be more careful about forcing people to use sanitizer before they hold her, so your help in reminding me would be great. I always have some with me.

I think a part of my freakout yesterday was the reality of how really fragile her health is. It scares me. So so much.

 But I’d rather not think about that. Check out the pictures I took of her last night at Mary Bridge. Sweet girl is always happy.