The Funk

The plague has descended upon our house. Hays started getting a cold last weekend, I followed suite a couple of days later, and now Will is in its clutches. It has made for a long, miserable, snotty, whiny week.

It's been fairly impossible to make Hays happy all week. He's normally a pretty laid back, compliant little dude, but not when he's sick. If he's not feeling good, he's a grumpy little bear, and that's certainly been the case this week.
"Hays, do you want to watch a Baby Einstein movie?"
"No!"
"Do you want a snack?"
"No snack!!!"
"Do you want to play outside?"
"No play outside!!!"
It was particularly fun when I had to take them to Publix. I made the dreadful mistake of getting Hays a chocolate chip cookie, instead of the sprinkle cookie he apparently wanted, so he promptly threw it on the floor and screamed "Cooooooooookie" through the rest of the shopping trip. Lovely.

Now, when Will's sick, he doesn't get mean, he gets pitiful. He's actually ten times easier to manage when he's sick because he's too listless to get up to his usual shenanigans. The downside is that Will being sick is terrifying. From the first sniffle, we start worrying if his cold is going to settle into his lungs. The more congested he gets, the more we worry. Once the coughing starts, I'm constantly wondering if it's just a matter of time before we have to head to the emergency room. He had a rough time last night. Lots of bad coughing fits, and we had to get him up twice to give him Albuterol. For now, it's working, and hopefully a strict regimen of steroid breathing treatments twice a day and Albuterol every four hours will get us through this bout of funk without a trip to St. Mary's, but only time will tell. Who knew the common cold could be so freakin' scary?

***UPDATE***
Maybe I should be careful about what I blog, because not two hours after I posted this, we were sitting in the ER. Will woke up this morning with a near-constant cough, and having been through this before, I didn't hesitate to head over to St. Mary's once an Albuterol treatment didn't make a dent in his symptoms. We spent five hours in the ER to get 3 breathing treatments, one RSV test, two chest x-rays, a dose of steroids and an antibiotic shot. I figured they'd send us home after that, because they always have in the past, but no such luck.
He fell asleep for a little while on Matt's chest, and his oxygen sats dropped way low- like 85- and they had to put him on oxygen. Oxygen= at least one night in the hospital. So they finally admitted us after we spent five hours in a tiny curtained cubicle, listening to the woman next to us moan like she was dying.
Once we got to the room, Will was all jacked up on breathing treatments and steroids and spent the next 30 minutes trying to take the room apart. Luckily, he ran out of steam pretty quickly and was relatively content to lay around and snuggle with me. I stayed with him all afternoon and Matt's spending the night with him. Matt can sleep anywhere, so while it won't be a pleasant night, he should be able to get some rest. I, on the other hand, often can't sleep at home in my own bed, so I sure wouldn't sleep at the hospital. And God knows, we both need sleep because tomorrow will be another long day. But I'm still sitting at home dealing with my mom guilt over not staying. Even though his daddy is there and he was dead to the world when I left. Doesn't matter. If I was there, I would feel mom guilt for not being home when Mason and Hays got up. And now that I'm here I feel mom guilt that I'm not at the hospital. You can't win.
But I talked to Matt about an hour ago. Will's passed out cold. He woke up briefly, got some cough medicine and refused to sleep[ without his oxygen mask. We figured he'd fight that thing tooth and nail, but I guess he realized it's a heck of a lot easier to sleep when you can breathe easily. He's surprised me a lot today. I swore up and down to the nurses that he'd yank an IV right out, but he's been perfect with it. Every time he started messing with it, I just had to tell him, "Leave your robot arm alone or you'll hurt it," and he's quit messing with it. I guess that kid knows what he needs. He's always been quite intuitive about what he needs. Don't forget, this is the child that removed his own trach and g-tube. Guess we just have to trust him!!
So now I'm heading to bed, trying to rest up for tomorrow. I know that my future holds a toddler with 'roid rage who's feeling better but is still cooped up in a little hospital room. I've got a backpack of toys ready for him. Pray that his oxygen stats stay up and we bring him home tomorrow. This is one mama hen that does not like having a chick (and her rooster) missing from her nest.