RAD!

Today we had another little trip to the emergency room with our little wheezer. She came down with a cold Tuesday night, and by the time Zach got home from work today (Thursday), she had gotten much worse and was working really hard to breathe. Even in the steamy bathroom (which we do for her every few hours when she's sick), she was breathing almost 70 times per minute. We called the doctor, talked over her symptoms, and they told us to take her to the ER.

They gave her Albuterol through a nebulizer, took x-rays (infection in lower right lung), and watched her for a few hours. She seemed to respond well to the treatment, but the doctor gave us a nebulizer to take home with us. It's ours to keep (thanks to our health insurance), and we're to use it every 4 hours when she's wheezing. We also got antibiotics for her.

We asked if she has asthma. The doctor said that they don't diagnose asthma in kids under 2 or 3 because they can't cooperate to do the tests. However, she appears to have RAD (Reactive Airway Disorder). Isn't there always some acronym for everything? This simply means that when she gets sick, it tends to go straight to her lungs and give her trouble breathing. The respiratory therapist also said we might want to think about having her tested for pet allergies.

Mercifully, after being nebulized and nursed, she is sleeping peacefully right now. We are all extremely sleep-deprived after 2 nights of little to no sleep.

In other news, my dear uncle miraculously survived what could very well have been a fatal car accident with a tractor trailer. He is slightly bruised up, but no broken bones, and not one stitch! His car was found underneath the tractor trailer, and they needed to cut him out with the jaws of life. We are so thankful that he survived.

And speaking of cars, this weekend we replaced our gas-guzzling (albeit well-loved) Isuzu Trooper with a 2004 Nissan Sentra. The gas prices are just killing us.

And with that, I am going to try and get some sleep.