House of Sickies

It all started on December 19th when Gage came down the with a stomach virus. It then hit me, Madison, & James. We were thankful Noah & Autumn stayed well. We were all better by the New Year for about 3 days. I have been suffering from allergies for several months now. I NEVER had allergies until I moved to North Texas 3 years ago but the past several months they have gotten worse. I will spend an ENTIRE day sneezing & constant runny nose. By the end of the day, my nose will be sore & red. The next day I wake up feeling great & the 3rd day I deal with my nose peeling all day from Kleenex irritation! It's always the same routine & this has been going on about once a week for the past several months. I've tried all kinds of allergy meds. James keeps telling me to go see an allergist which I know I need to but who has time for that?! Noah was the next sick with strep & an ear infection. Madison started feeling bad last Friday but she never ran fever (which she rarely does) so we waited to go to the doctor until yesterday. Strep was negative but they said it's because the test only detects antibodies & the antibodies could not be showing anymore because we waited several days so they are sending it off to the lab to see if there is strep DNA detected. If so, they will let us know & get some medicine for her. As of now, she just has to let it run it's course. Autumn started getting sick late Saturday night/Sunday morning. She was running fever between 100-103 for 2 days, day 3 fever was between 99-100, & we thought maybe she was getting better. Day 4, fever still was around, she has a runny nose, & seems like an ear infection. I never take Autumn to the dr for sickness. We have everything she needs here & doctors like to overreact because of her trach so we always treat at home. I know her well so we only go in when there is nothing else we can do from home which so far thankfully we have never been admitted for sickness & have always been able to control everything at home. James called her dr yesterday to ask if there is anything more we could do & if we should bring her in or just let it run it's course. We suspect she has the flu but not certain. She's the only one who actually received the flu vaccine this year. We make sure she gets it every year because of her high risk of getting really sick fast. The doctor confirmed it would be too late to start tamiflu even if it were the flu & we are doing everything we need to be doing. Her lungs are our biggest concern & so far they had not been bad until last night. I went to bible study last night & when I got home about 8:45pm, Autumn was already asleep & was needing oxygen support with her vent. Last time she needed oxygen was December 2012 when she had RSV. So, last night I was up until 3:30am giving breathing treatments & watching her pulse ox machine & adjusting her vent settings & oxygen as needed. It's been 12 hours since she has ran fever so I pray we are towards the end. Today I told her nurse to get aggressive with breathing treatments so she has been getting Xopenex (to open airways) every 2 hours, Pulmicort (helps with inflammation) at night, Tobi(antibiotic) twice a day, & now we are adding Pulmozyme to help with secretion thickness. We have also been giving her ear drops. She has needed vent support for 4 days now. I hope these treatments help so we can keep treating at home. Please pray my girls feel better soon, everyone else stays well, & that I will soon make time for myself to go see an allergist. ;)