Sick and Sicker

It was a rough week around here last week. Two weekends ago, Caroline started getting a cold. Sunday afternoon, she spiked a fever of 103.5, started coughing and was just generally unhappy. By Monday night, she was coughing so hard during the night that she couldn't sleep. Tuesday, I took her in to the doctor. He took about 30 seconds listening to her lungs and diagnosed her with pneumonia. He sent us straight to the hospital to get a chest X-Ray and then we went back to his office to go over the results with him. He showed us a very distinct area of fluid around a bronchiole in her left lung and a small amount in her right lung. We left with a prescription for antibiotics and cough medicine.

My mom had come over to keep Catherine while I took Caroline to the doctor, and when she got home, she mentioned that Catherine was coughing a little. I had noticed that she had a bit of a stuffy nose that morning but still seemed pretty happy. But, when I picked her up, she felt a little warm. Took her temp and it was 100.2-- low grade but still a fever. As the evening progressed, I noticed that her breathing sounded abnormal. I wasn't sure if it was just because she was mouth breathing due to a stuffy nose or if she was really having a hard time breathing. I called our dr's office and spoke to the nurse on call. I told her the situation and we went over a checklist of symptoms, and she told me that it just sounded like a cold but to watch her overnight. I was to call back if her breathing changed-- otherwise, to call the pediatrician in the morning. So, I took her in the next morning. She had an ear infection in the right ear and bronchiolitis, inflammation of the small airways in the lungs, caused by a virus. He said any virus that can cause a cold in adults can cause bronchiolitis in babies. They tested her for RSV, but it was negative. She got a breathing treatment to help with the wheezing and we were sent home with a nebulizer to do breathing treatments 3-4 times per day along with a antibiotic for the ear infection.
She woke up the next morning seeming to feel OK. Her temp. was 100.7 and still stuffy and not breathing completely normally, but not worse than the previous day. By mid-afternoon, her breathing was becoming much faster (2-3 times the normal rate )and more labored and she sounded crackly and had a deep, hard productive cough. I called our peds office and they said to bring her in that evening. The doc listened to her lungs, did a breathing treatment, listened to her breathing again and said we needed to get a chest X-Ray. She couldn't tell if it was pneumonia for sure. At the last minute, she decided to get a blood count "just to be sure her white blood cell count isn't high". Catherine's WBC count came back at 28,000. She then tells us that 30,000 means automatic admission to the hospital. At that point, we decide to admit Catherine to T.C. Thompson Children's Hospital and just get the chest X-Ray there. Before leaving, they gave Catherine oral steroids and an antibiotic injection. The chest X-Ray showed pneumonia, which was no huge surprise after the bloodwork results and we spent a very, very long night at the hospital. By morning, Catherine had improved quite a bit and our doctor called at lunch and said we could go home.
Caroline is doing great now. After a couple of days of antibiotics and a few good night's sleep thanks to the cough medicine, she was back to playing a feeling good. She still doesn't have a lot of stamina and we have not let her go back to school yet, but her energy (and appetite!!!) is improving every day.
Catherine is slowly getting better. We do breathing treatments every 4 hours around the clock and she is on oral antibiotics and steroids. Her breathing still is not completely back to normal and she continues to have a stuffy, runny nose and cough. Through the whole process, Catherine never lost her smiley disposition, but now we are really starting to see that she is feeling better. She will probably be a bit under the weather for a while longer and it may take weeks for her to completely kick the whole thing, according to the doctor. So, we are staying close to home and keeping it low-key so that she can get well and not catch any more bugs.
Both girls have a follow-up doctor's appointment on Thursday.