Cheryl and Josh dot Net

Lily is still wheezing… poor thing! But she seems to be doing much better and is playing and laughing so that is great!

We had the appointment with the pulmonologist this morning and I think it went pretty well. The Dr kept calling her “Little Person” – it was really cute. He reviewed all of her notes, and even made a comment about how many notes she has for being so young… After asking us some more questions and listening to her, we pretty much just have to keep up with what we are doing and wait. It seems as though if she continues to get wheezy every time she gets sick then she probably has asthma. There is a chance she could grow out of it or it might stay with her due to the trauma her lungs endured during the RSV adventure. The Dr did take a swab of her throat to “see what’s growing in there.” So hopefully we get the results of that, if any, soon.

In other exciting news, the Dr was feeling around in her mouth and apparently she has some teeth getting ready to pop out, I don’t think that they are super close but we could see the swollen lumps in her gums. So that should make for an exciting time.

She is back to her old self, peeing through diapers, laughing at herself and the cat and banging whatever toy she has in her hand on whatever is close enough to make noise! She’s great! We can survive asthma if we have to, I just keep thinking that it could be so much worse.

Lily, Lily, Lily…

So my last update was Monday and oh the time we have had since then. Josh stayed home with Lily on Tuesday because she can’t go back to daycare until she has been fever-free for 24 hours and she is clearly sick so we wanted to be with her. I called Josh about a million times checking on her throughout the day and around noon she still had a fever so we decided that I would stay home Wednesday. So, Wednesday she wakes up and still sounds terrible but does not have a fever. I decide to call the Dr because she seems to be working really hard to breathe. When they checked her oxygen it was 91-93% (which is what it was when they admitted her to the hospital). So They gave her a breathing treatment, even though she had had one about 2 hours prior, checked her again and she went up to 95%. So that was great! It meant that the treatments were working even if for a short time. The Dr wanted to see her back on Thursday so we made an appointment for 8:20am, this is where the fun begins.

Lily has not had a fever for 24 hours so we decide that I will take her to the appointment and then drop her off at daycare. The plan was that I will come by on my lunch to give her a breathing treatment. So we go to the Dr, she checks her out, oxygen is 99% (YAY!). The Dr decided that we can keep doing what we are doing and let her know if anything changes especially if she develops a fever (forshadowing ) But she also wants to refer Lily to the pulmonologist since these episodes of wheezing last for so many days. The Dr tells me to let her know if they can’t get her in within about 4 weeks. So Lily and I go to the front to try and make an appointment and its for the end of May. So I relay the Dr’s message and they say that the pulmonologist will call the Dr and then someone will call me, Ok -that seems to be taken care of.

So next, I drop Lily off at daycare, give them the rundown of how she is doing and that I will come by for a breathing treatment around noon, and just to give you an idea the time is now about 9am.

I get to work at 9:15ish and I’m already late for a meeting so I run to the meeting. At 9:45 my pager goes off and I have a voicemail… from daycare. They just wanted to call to tell me that Lily has a fever, its only 100.2 so she doesn’t have to go home… yet. So I ask them to take her temperature again in about an hour and give me a call back. An hour later her temperature is 101.2, so now her temperture is going up and she has to go home from daycare. I scramble around calling my supervisor, Josh and the Dr. Because of the fever we need to get a chest x-ray. Since the daycare is so close to the hospital and it was a nice day out, I walk over gather Lily and all of her stuff and walk back to the hospital to get the x-ray. Lily’s x-ray order was put in STAT so we waited for about 5 minutes once it was over and received a call from the Dr. Lily has a “hazy” spot in her right upper lung that is suspicious for pneumonia. So she orders us some antibiotics and we are on our way home, the time was about 11:30, I worked for about an hour and a half.

Friday, Lily and I just relaxed all day. We did venture out to WalMart and then once Josh got home we went to dinner but mostly we just hung around the house.

Today, we have no fever (YAY) but she is still wheezing away. We are giving her all her medicines which include the breathing treatments, antibiotics and steriods – she is such a trooper! She decided Friday that she was finally hungry and wants to eat so that is great also! Our appointment with the pulmonologist is Tuesday at 8am (apparently our Dr talked to him and they decided she needed to be seen sooner rather than later so that we can try to avoid this from happening again).

She sure keeps us on our toes! In more fun news, she is sitting up like a champ! She falls to the side and does face plants every now and then but other than that she is doing great! She is loving toys and being able to see them sitting up instead of them all hanging over hear head. We are working on clapping, I’m not sure when she is actually supposed to be able to do this, but I’m hoping its soon! We are also working on mamamama and dadadada but have not heard anything vaguely clost yet… again, we’ll keep you updated.

I know this was a long post, but I wanted you to be able to picture what Thursday morning was like for all of us!

Happy Easter!

Lily had a great first Easter on Sunday, other than the beginnings of her cold, but more on that later. We went to church in the morning. Lily wore the most adorable Easter dress. It was white with purple-y flowers and she got A TON of compliments on it. Too bad we didn’t take a picture of her in it! That is so not like us. After church we drove to Newman to celebrate with the Eckertys, Reeleys and Bells. Hailey and Lily even participated in an Easter Egg hunt. It was a little chilly but we had a great time! I posted a bunch of pictures from Sunday. Enjoy!

As for the wheezes and sneezes… Lily started coughing and sneezing on Friday so we sort of knew this was coming. Monday I made a comment to Bill and said “at least she hasn’t started wheezing yet.” And then went on to talk about after the wheezing starts then comes the fever. Boy, do I know my daughter well. The wheezes started Sunday and at about 10pm Sunday night along came the fever. We gave her some Tylenol and cuddled a lot Sunday night. This morning she still had the fever and now was not interested in eating, or if she did eat, it all came right back out. Luckily, I don’t work on Mondays, so we stayed home and just relaxed. About 3pm I realized that she had eaten about 4oz since 1am and decided it was time to call the Dr. She had all of her usual symptoms, working hard to breathe, fever, not eating, fussiness,etc. It goes to show how often we call the Dr because the RN, who knows me by name, said that when she saw Lily’s name pop up she was hoping for an ear infection and not the breathing problems. Not so lucky… So the Dr said she was definitely wheezey and they gave her a breathing treatment at the office so she could listen before and after. She said that they were helping so she wants us to continue those. She also wants to do a little more this time because Lily has such a hard time fighting off colds and they seem to affect her lungs so badly. She was started on an oral steriod for a couple of days. We are hoping this allows the swelling in her lungs to go down and she will be able to breathe easier. Then after that we are giving her inhaled steriods (through the nebulizer machine) twice a day. This is to help her lungs when she gets sick again so that she doesn’t start the wheezing. Its premeditative (I think I made that up) but not preventative if that makes any sense at all. We are hoping to be able to wean her off of these once summer finally decides to come. But during the spring when everything is blooming and then it still being cold and flu season, it is just too hard on her body.

We came home from the Dr’s office and gave Lily her first dose. The bottle said to take with food or milk so we tried a bottle, Lily wanted none of that. So I tried to giver her some peas, because she liked those the last time we tried. I’m not exactly positive what triggered it but peas, medicine and a whole lot more came right out. I guess she’ll get another “first” dose tomorrow.

Right now she’s sleeping, so hopefully tonight goes well. Josh is staying home with her tomorrow since she can’t go back to daycare since she has had a fever. We’ll keep you updated!

We tried rice cereal, oatmeal, green beans… finally we found a winner – Lily loves prunes! She was sucking on the spoon and I couldn’t shovel it in quick enough. I will get some pictures up but as you can imagine prunes ended up everywhere! They were in her eyes, her hair and we even found prunes up her nose. Love it! Since then, I also decided that I was going to try and make some food for her. I have no idea where this idea came from but it seemed like a good idea at the time. I went to the library and checked out a couple of books. One of them had “recipes” and the first one was for carrots. So last night I made carrots. We received a steamer for our wedding and have used it probably twice so I figured this would be the perfect time to break that sucker out. I steamed some carrots and then put them in the blender. I had to add some water to get it runny enough for her to eat. We tried those and she liked them too! I don’t know that I had enough water because after awhile she started to cough and looked like she was choking a little bit, so that was the end of that. I froze the rest of the carrots in ice cube trays (the ones that I bought were long and skinny, I think they were for ice to fit in a water bottle). Anyway, due to the shape they look like frozen carrot sticks. I have now replaced a boat load of breast milk with frozen carrot sticks

In other news, Lily can roll from her back to her tummy and her tummy to her back like a champ! She is sitting up pretty well, we still keep the boppy behind her but she’s doing great! We are still going to physical therapy once a week and its going well. She still has a major tilt but we are doing the best we can to get her stronger and straighter.

I don’t know where she learned but Lily can blow raspberries. It cracks me up! Except tonight, while eating green beans she thought it would be a good time to do it. I did not agree. She sits in her high chair to eat because we are trying to teach her that that is where she eats. However, I took some pictures and there are like three toys on the tray. So, we need to work on our mixed messages.

Finally, we have been working on sign language with Lily for a while now. We really have only been focusing on “milk.” She still can’t make the sign herself but when we do it she gets very excited and then mad if we don’t have the bottle in front of her quick enough. I really think she knows what it means and can’t wait for her to do it herself!

We are going to see the Easter bunny on Friday – I’ll post some pictures as soon as I can.

Happy Easter!!!