Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Illness Update

I took Kacey for her chest x-ray yesterday afternoon. I sat on pins and needles until this morning when the doctor's office called. I was in the middle of teaching and couldn't answer it. The nurse left a voicemail. "Hi Jill, please give us a call when you can. We got Kacey's x-ray results." I felt a punch in my gut because if nothing was wrong then she would have said "Everything looks fine." So once I got a free moment, I slipped out to call her back.

Diagnosis: Viral bronchitis with the start of pneumonia and asthma is not ruled out.

CRAP! No wonder she's felt so bad :( So now they are thinking that she never fully recovered from the nasty sickness she had a few weeks ago and her body bottled it up. This morning she was coughing up stuff that looked like chucks of green snot...ewwwwwww! I'm guessing the inhaler opened her up enough that she could finally breathe. Her pains were not as frequent today but I can definately understand what she's feeling and it's NO fun! :( The nurse said that the same thing that happened to me could have happened to her. When I was diagnosed with asthma 5 years ago, I had battled bronchitis for 8 weeks and it turned into pneumonia that I battled for 10 more weeks. My lungs were tired and I felt like I could never get a full breath. It sucks!

We still go back next Tues and they will do another chest x-ray to make sure things are clearing up. I feel like a crappy Mom for letting it linger as long as it did :( :( :( :( :(

Hopefully she'll really start feeling better by the weekend! On a good note, the D-Monster hasn't reared it's ugly head during all of this. She's bounced between the 100's up to the 300's but nothing that she couldn't handle. So for that, thank you D-Monster for staying in your ugly cave :)

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Diabetes Isn't Enough?!?!

Yes....we're ALIVE! It's been weeks since I've blogged and I won't go over the boring details about why I haven't been here but bottom line is...We're SICK!

I've been struggling terribly with my asthma and recovering from bronchitis. It's kicking my ass and I can't find the time to rest. I'm seriously thinking about scheduling an appointment to have allergy tests done and see what is causing these triggers. Kayleigh has now started with her "asthma cough" and tightness in her chest and she's back on her inhaler too. Thank you Virginia pollen! Grrrrrrr!

THEN...last week....Kacey came to me telling me she felt like her heart was squeezing. Noooooo please no! So I asked her if she felt like she couldn't breathe? YES! She clenched her chest and I called the doctor. Of course...our doctor was on Spring Break and I couldn't get her in until today. Over the last few days, she's gotten worse and the tightness has become regular. Just out of curiosity for my own piece of mind, I pulled out my peak flow meter and asked her to blow. 200. 180. 170. NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! I quickly googled "normal" for her age/height/weight..... 340-350. Are you F%#^ING KIDDING ME?!?!?! I had a minor meltdown :( I took her in this morning and they did an EKG to make sure her heart was ok... all good. Then they had her blow in the peak flow meter... 240. 210. 200. UGH!! The doctor looked at me and said, "You know thats not good, right?" *sigh* Yes! So she took the results into our regular doctor and he said "Well...you know Grandma has it, Mom has it, Big Sis has it and most likely she's got it. Send her for a chest x-ray." She came back in and explained everything to us. We're looking at an ASTHMA diagnosis on top of all of this crap. My heart is breaking right now! He also put her on Singular and Zyrtec along with the same inhaler that me & Kay are on every 4 hours. The only thing that makes this easy is...Kays been asthmatic since she was 10 months old and I know how to care for her and I've had it for 5 years now so I know how it feels. Unlike diabetes, where NO ONE in our family has Type 1. We go back for a recheck in a week to see how the inhaler and other meds are working for her.

They say....God doesn't give you anymore than you can handle....but I sure wish he'd stop dishing this out to me! :(

I'm still working my long term substitute teacher job. The teacher that I am subbing for had surgery and she was due to come back last Friday and the doctor would not release her. He extended her another week so my last day is sopposed to be this Friday but I'm not 100% sure because she goes back for a recheck and if he doesn't release her then I will be extended again. I'm worn out! I haven't worked full time in years and I've been so used to picking my days and working around the girls schedules. I'm not used to having to grocery shop on the weekends and pay bills AFTER work then still manage a household! To all you working Moms out there....YOU'RE MY HERO! I don't think it would be so bad if I wasn't battling this cold and asthma crap. I get so tired so easy and I'm falling asleep by 8:30pm every night! Then...to top everything off...my carpal tunnel is acting up again. I've tried so hard to avoid surgery and as long as I give my hand a break from repetitive things then it settles down. I can't type as much as I want to :( because I go numb and then it tingles til it's painful. Nights are the worst!

Enough complaining...LOL!

I'm going to try and catch up on blogs to see what everyone is up to :) I do manage to check Facebook daily and post there with short posts as I can.

I will update next week once we have an official diagnosis!