2011 has started out really crappy. We have NOT been healthy. All of us have been really sick and I am over it. I am a nurse now. Never thought I would carry that title.
Hollin started out the year with one of the worse cases of
croup I have seen. Croup is easy to determine because you are woken up to a seal barking in your house, oh wait that is a kid! It was my kid and she was really sick. She had a high fever accompanied with hallucinations. She would get up in a deep sleep and start yelling and running around. She looked awake but she wasn't and it took a long time to get her out of it. As a mom, it is scary, really scary. You don't know what to do, go to ER, call doctor or wait it out. We finally got to the doctor and they gave her steroids to help her feel better. The steroids help with the barking but it does not help with the cough. Her cough just stuck around forever.
With Hollin getting croup it was inevitable that Johnny would get it, and he did! He started barking, we got steroids and his "bark" went away but he continues to cough. Eventually his cough became a runny gunky nose and I knew what that meant...
ear infection. Back to the doctor we went and sure enough, another ear infection. No wonder he doesn't talk, he is constantly hearing the world muffled due to his ear infections. Amoxicillian here we come! Yet again. The pediatrician also put Hollin on Amoxicillian as a precaution because...
during all this I got
strep! I have never had strep. It was awful and I feel horrible for never giving anyone enough sympathy when they had strep. I thought I had an ear infection because I couldn't swallow without plugging my ears. I was achy, had a high fever, the works. It is awful being as sick as I was and having to take care of my kids. I don't care what is wrong with me, my job is mom, first and foremost, and I was failing at this job because of how sick I was. I hated this feeling. I cried and hard, because I was so scared about how sick I was and not being able to take care of my kids. For me nothing could be worse. I love taking care of them.
Just after we were all on antibiotics and I was thinking things were looking up a storm broke out. Hollin came up to me telling me she had goosebumps all over her body. I looked and panicked. I was convinced she had chicken pox. We called Annie (our angel) and she came right down and looked at Hollin's bumps. Not chicken pox, allergic reaction to amoxicillian? We thought that was it for sure. I gave her benadryl, discontinued amoxicillian and went to work the next day thinking she was fine except that her "hives" were going to take more than one dose of Benadryl to go away.
After being at work for a couple hours Annie (our angel and daycare lady) emailed me explaining that Hollin would not walk. She said her ankles hurt and Annie instructed me to call doctor. Now for those of you that don't know Annie, she is always calm and thinks the doctor is not neccessary most of the time. Now she was telling me to call the doctor. I panicked and did as I was told. It was for my daughter after all. I called, they asked too many questions only to result in saying they needed to see her. Um, Hello, I am a teacher, what am I suppose to do? Say, "hey class, I know you are only 8 but you can teach yourself for the rest of the day while I take Hollin to doctor." Um, no. I called Ted, he is about ready to walk into a big meeting and so I was stuck. Again, our angel (Annie) came to the rescue and had her 21 year old son take my sweet baby girl to pediatrician. What 21 year old will take a 4 year old with spots all over and can't walk to the doctor? This one! He rose to the occasion and I will never be able to truly tell him how grateful I am. He had to help Hollin get a pee sample for goodness sake. Impressive right?
The pediatrician determined that Hollin had
HSP or Henoch-Schonlein purpura. It is not common and very scary. I had a million questions and I was panicked. Very panicked! I called the doctor myself (even though he already called Ted) I had a million questions and I needed to hear how terrified I needed to be. It is scary and we had no idea how bad it was going to be and what was coming. Would it be easy and good? Or would it be awful and result in us being in the hospital? He answered my questions but in the end, I was still unresolved and terrified. My parents were about ready to fly home from California. Time was what would determine how bad she would get and I was not about ready to wait. But waiting is what I did and had to do!
I waited and she got better, got bad again, and got better. She is still covered in spots but is walking! She will be in pain suddenly and not able to walk at any given moment and therefore, we are still watching her. Are we scared? Terrified? YES! We are trying to remain calm and help Hollin. Why can't I fix this? My job as a mom is to protect my kids but when they are sick and you can't fix it, kills me! No one prepared me for this, or told me how hard it would be when your kids are sick. Could anyone prepare me? No but I am getting through it. I love my husband, my angel (Annie), my parents and everyone else for helping me. Without them I can not help Hollin or Johnny.
