A week for the history books

WOW!! If this is what happens when you have more than one child, then I think I'm done!! So it started on Friday, March 6th. Dallen had been sick (again) with a cough for a few days, so I decided after 3 days of worry that it sounded bad enough to take him to the doctor. He tested positive for RSV (basically a very bad respiratory virus that only affects babies poorly. To others it's just a common cold). His oxygen levels tested fine, and so they send us home to rest. They told me the most important things for him are to be kept in a well humidified room, and given lots of saline nasal drops. On Monday I was to take him in again to make sure he wasn't developing any ear infections or pnuemonia, and to ck his oxygen agian. OH WAIT, I forgot to mention we were MOVING into our new house on Saturday. How was I supposed to help with moving anything, and also take care of my sweet baby boy who was very, very sick?? And there was no way I could have him in a humid environment, right? Well, with the help of family, we were able to get Dallen's room set up with a humidifier in it before we moved anything else. So that was a relief. Then Sienna started coughing, and complaining of her feet hurting. What was this supposed to mean?? I've never heard her complain of hurting feet before... On Monday we take Dallen to the doc, and everything looks great! Yay! We head home to unpack some more with the help of Grandma Shaw. Well within 4 hours Dallen was screaming!! I mean worse than anything I've heard from him! I could barely even get him to nurse without crying. So after 4 more hours of crying, I finally called the doctor on call, who tells me to try suctioning his nose, check his body for any hairs or strings of thread or anything that could possibly be wrapped around his little body somewhere. If nothing seems to work then try Tylenol. Well, Tylenol seemed to calm him. He slept until it wore off, then he cried more. More Tylenol, more crying, more tylenol, more crying. The next day I was going to go into work late to see how he would do in the day, but I ended out taking the whole day off, and taking Dallen into the doctor again (Third time in 5 days). Turns out he has a "screaming" ear infection in his left ear, and one regular ear infection also in his right ear. Rx for Amoxicillin. Poor guy. So that night I am awakened by Sienna crying with a pretty high fever. Jeff decides he'll take off work on Wednesday instead of me taking my 2nd of only 2 days that I work off. So very hesitantly I head to work, with my husband and 2 medicated children at home. Mid afternoon I get a call from Jeff saying that Sienna is burning up with an under the arm temp of 103F. Well, I decided to call the doctor's office and they reccomend bringing her in... 3rd day at the docs office in a row now. They test her for the flu, negative. She just has a bad virus, but it appears that she to has an ear infection starting (not the cause of the fever). Start her on Omnicef, keeping in mind that this will only help the ear to NOT hurt, but she'll still have the fever for up to 5 days. Well Thursday rolls around and Dallen is still coughing, but his ears seem to be doing much better, he doesn't need the Tylenol anymore. And Sienna's fever seems to have subsided, but now she's developing a rash all over her body, and she's still complaining of her feet hurting her. Well I'll be darned if I was going to call the doctors office again. I could handle the rash. On Friday the rash had worsened. It was darker and literally all over her, even on her palms and the soles of her feet. The poor girl looked absolutly miserable. Then it started to itch, oh yes it sure did itch!! I called the doctor, they told me to bring her in. The itching was so excrutiating that she didn't even want her lunch, she just wanted to get to the doctor as quickly as she could. She was screaming and itching for 4 hours before we found out she had what is called fifth disease. We could give her children's Claritin for the itching, and Tylenol or Motrin for the joint pain (yes, joint pain! This was the explanation for her feet hurting!). Oh my gosh, what a week!! So from Friday through Friday we were at the doctors office 5 times. I'm very, very grateful we have health insurance. The copays were rough enough to swallow along with having just bought a house, a new washer and dryer, and water heater. I can't imagine if we didn't have our health insurance! So hopefully I'll get to work this week, and hopefully we'll be feeling better around here soon! Jeff and I are both feeling a little under the weather now, but we've been told that Fifth disease isn't very often passed to adults, so we should be in the clear there. At least we won't have to deal with a rash. (BTW, Sienna still has her rash, and the claritin only helps a little, she's still itching like crazy!) Wish us luck for this upcoming week!! I suppose it couldn't be much worse, right??