A trip to the ER

Well Clara has asthma, poor thing. 

I've noticed that she's been waking herself up with coughing (that sounds wet) and occasionally light wheezing but it hasn't been too bad. It's kind of taking a back seat to the ear infection that won't go away up until now. But, today at Mother's Day Out when I picked her up her teacher said that she got so out of breath trying to take a nap that it took them a while to calm her down and get her breathing (mostly) okay again. I was already on my way to pick her up when they called me to let me know or I would have been there earlier. They recommended I take her into the pediatrician immediately, and after listening to her for a few minutes I had to agree. I called her pedi on the way out of MDO, they had me "leave a message with the nurse" and I'm glad I didn't wait around for that to be returned because it was OVER 4 HOURS LATER that she called me back. Instead I popped into the first walk in clinic I found which was at CVS (They call it a "minute clinic" but a more realistic name would be the 55 minute wait clinic).

I tried to keep Clara amused by wandering around for a while.

Then I bought her some pretzel goldfish and that helped the time pass for a while. Especially when we would count to 3 together before she ate another fist full, haha.

Then she decided to do a little light reading and coupon-ing. At this point she sounded horrible and was getting bored and irritated, so thank goodness they finally called us back.

Only to tell us that there wasn't anything they could really do for her there since she needed a breathing treatment in addition to steroids so they told me to take her to the ER. 

Off we went.

By this time Clara is feeling exceptionally lousy and rather pissed off after the first doctor poked and prodded her.

By the time the second round of doctors and nurses took her temperature and oxygen levels and listened to her lungs and whatever else they did she was really really really sad and just laid in my arms for a while.

Until they came back with the breathing treatment. She did NOT like this at all, and believe me it took 2 hands so there aren't any photos of the during. But I sang to her and rocked her during it for 15 solid minutes while she hiccuped and cried and giant tears rolled down her cheeks. She only managed to remove the mask once which I thought was pretty good. 

She was desperate by the time it was all over. My heart just broke for her.

But they weren't quite done with her yet. They needed to listen to her lungs one more time to make sure it worked (which it did, thank you Lord!) and give her this foul tasting/smelling steroid medicine to help clear up the gunk in her lungs. She was not pleased.

Thankfully we had plans to meet our friends Collin, Laura & Jackson for dinner after and she was allowed to drink all of the apple juice and eat all of the french fries she wanted. That, coloring, and making silly faces made things a lot better - not to mention she wasn't wheezing anymore!!

We have a prescription to go get her a nebulizer and steroids tomorrow so when another attack occurs I can help her at home, away from the scary doctors and metal circles and scrubs. 

After all of it I felt completely drained, but I'm so relieved she's feeling better and I did love the cuddles, even if they were borne out of sheer despair on her part. It was quite an experience!