As They Grow Up

So, I promised some pics of Kanga in her new mitts and of the fort we built! Here ya go. Monkey and Kanga in our rebuilt fort.

The Original Melting

Kanga crawling into the freshly rebuilt fort, and Kanga breaking the freshly rebuilt fort. Monkey wasn't too happy, but I had to laugh! She had watched Monkey and I crash through the melting fort and thought she should try it too! Clearly her new mitts were working! She had such a riot in the fort that day that I had to stay out with her a little extra! We went for a walk to the end of the sidewalk, and then I threw her in the snowbanks a few times. She thought that was the greatest!

We also now have an orange belt in the family. Monkey progressed through the 10 little dragon belts (red, yellow, orange, gold, purple, green, blue, brown, black, black 1st dan) and then joined the black dragon class at the yellow rank in September (skipped red and red advanced due to completing the little dragon program). He chose to take the summer off to try gymnastics, and then went right back to the karate training when school began.

Monkey has been doing very well at school since returning after winter holidays too. His communication book has had little but good comments! :)

And on to illness...Kanga yet again had a bout of bronchitis. Last weekend (January 15,16,17) she started to get a cough. When she gets a cough it tends to quickly get into her chest, and by Monday it sounded like it was going that way, so I took the morning off of volunteering to take her into the walk-in clinic. We were in and out fast enough, but the doctor wasn't very helpful. He asked what was wrong, and I said that she had a cough, and having had bronchitis two times since her birthday (late May early June and in September) I was concerned that it would quickly turn that way again. He said that bronchitis is over diagnosed, and that any chest congested cough is bronchitis. Okay, fine. He told me to just call it a chest cold and not call it bronchitis. Okay, fine. He told me my little girl was fine and not to worry about it. Uh, no.

Home we went, momma unhappy, baby still coughing and her inhaler not doing a whole lot as far as I could tell.

Tuesday I kept her home too, as she was still not better and we'd been up all night between her coughing and just being miserable. I got the vaporizer out at 2:30 and she felt well enough to fall asleep around 4:00. We got a whole 2 1/2 hours of sleep! Yay!

Tuesday night, listening to my poor baby, I decided that if we were up all night again I would be taking her back to the walk-in to get another doctor to take a look at her.

Indeed we were up all night once again, and I had the vaporizer going an hour before bed to make sure the air was moist, got her risers under her crib legs to get an angle so she could get to sleep, and alas! My poor baby couldn't sleep until about 5:30 when she was just too exhausted to keep her eyes open any longer!

Wednesday morning we dropped of Monkey and in we went to have Kanga looked at again. We got the doctor who did her follow-up in June (and prescribed the inhaler after the liquid Ventolin was a pain in the ...) and she was not impressed. She saw Kanga in the waiting room on Monday and assumed she'd been looked after. When she saw my baby she said who let you get so sick! I told her that I brought her in on Monday and the doctor had said she was fine. She looked at the chart and said she'd be speaking with him. Nice.

She then listened to me and my concerns, including that Matt had strep throat on the weekend and that the other doctor hadn't looked in her mouth. Poor Kanga's throat was red and tonsils swollen, her airway was very congested, and she told me that if Kanga started wheezing at all to get her straight to the emergency room... She prescribed her some antibiotic for her bronchitis, potential tonsillitis, and said that if there was an ear infection rather than bothering Kanga more by probing, the antibiotic would wipe that out too. As she hadn't had any fever, I doubt she had an ear infection, but she's all cleared out now!

Anyway, my baby was on antibiotic every 8hrs (so a dose at 2:30 with Monkey's potty break), Ventolin (her inhaler) every 4hrs, and Tylenol for her throat every 4hrs. I gave her Tylenol before we left (I'd given her Ventolin at 7:30 so it wasn't time yet) and we were off to Shoppers! I also needed to get her the bigger AeroChamber spacer as her baby one from a few months ago is too small!

A week later, and she is MUCH better. All that 1st doctor had to do was give her a script so she didn't get so bad. She has a history, we know what is going to happen, and yes, the A word (asthma) was brought up again. Matt doesn't think she has asthma, as he sees kids with the condition all the time, but we will find out either way and it doesn't matter one bit to me. It is a lot more controllable now then it used to be, so she won't be limited if she does have it, and it would seem that it is a seasonal when sick thing for her anyway!

Alas allergy season is upon us and poor Kanga is once again experiencing symptoms. Last spring I asked her doctor if there was anything I could do to ease her nightly stuffiness and coughing. Last fall she got a horrible cough that we were sure would turn into croup. This spring, she got stuffy right before her birthday party, and hasn't been run free since.

Well, last week, on Wednesday, her cough got bad enough for me to seek medical attention, so I had the option of an emergency room for 3-4hrs, or a walk-in clinic. You can guess which one I chose! She was just in for her 1 year check up the week before, the cough was there, and the runny nose was at 4 weeks, but her doctor said she was fine. Maybe she was, but my own allergies went crazy the weekend between, so I can understand hers getting worse too. Her runny nose was never yellow, green, etc. so that makes me think it was always allergies.

Anyway, Wednesday we went to the doctor, and he said he was worried about her, listened to her chest for about 5 minutes, her crying all the while (good inhalation that way though!), asked if she has asthma or any family history of it, and carefully chose the medicine he wanted her to take from his book. He gave her azithromycin for her cough (thought she had bronchitis) and a Ventolin syrup for her tightness.

Off to the pharmacy...Well, they had the azithromycin no problem, but no Ventolin syrup. We got an alternative, and it was delivered to our house after she got to bed. As soon as she woke up I gave her medicine to her, and back to sleep she went.

In the morning she had her medicine, well wore it more accurately. She got enough of her Ventolin wanna-be to be able to breathe better, and her breathing had only gotten worse as the night went on. I had to give her a second dose of the azithromycin though (good thing there was an extra!) because she spit out ALL of the bright red syrup.

Anyhow, the doctor also said he wanted us to bring Kanga back to the office in 3 days to see how she was doing, and prescribed 3 days of the Ventolin syrup. On Saturday, we got another pediatrician, and she recommended we continue the Ventolin. She was not congested at all, but still had tightness in her chest. I said we would need more as the first doctor had only prescribed 3 days worth, and mentioned that the pharmacy had given us an alternative to the original script as they didn't have any Ventolin syrup in stock. She asked us to get the pharmacy to call her, and I brought up the fact that Kanga wasn't really taking it! We would try and she would spit it back out... This is when inhalers were brought back up. It would be much easier to get the medicine into her if she took a huge crying breath in while fighting an AeroChamber rather than spitting syrup in my face that has to go all through her body before getting to her tight bronchioles.

Off to the pharmacy! :) We picked up her inhaler and AeroChamber, gave her the first dose, and there is a definite difference. The second pediatrician also briefly talked about if the cough doesn't subside quickly enough, then we may have to start a steroid inhaler as well. Sounding a lot like my baby girl has allergen induced asthma, but only time will tell.