jennanddave.com

...bronchitis. The doctor spent a long time listening to Henry breath, checked his ears/nose/tonsils, then went back and listened to his lungs again, then said he thought most likely it's bronchitis. He asked what we had been doing for his cough, and we told him albuterol, which is what we're supposed to give him as a rescue medication when his asthma flares up, and pulmicort, which is a very low dose steroid that we give him twice a day every day during cold/flu season so that when he does get sick, he doesn't develop asthma. Twice this year we've used the albuterol for Henry when he's developed a wheezy-sounding cough, and both times I've felt like it wasn't doing anything for him. Our instructions are to get it going when he starts wheezing, except those are surprisingly ambiguous instructions when it comes to reality. So whenever he develops a cough, we think it must be his asthma from the way it sounds, we crank up the albuterol, then when we have a doctor check him out, they say it's not and that it's not necessary to keep using the albuterol. It's very frustrating.

Anyway, we left with a prescription for antibiotics (his first in over a year, which I mention only because that's how long it's been since he's had an ear infection: hooray!), a recommendation for Robitussin CF, and a better attitude about doctors in general because someone didn't get a "pinch" (aka. shot). I told Dave I didn't really want to give him the cough suppressant/expectorant, mainly because I don't take the stuff myself, and it seemed like we were loading up his system with a lot of medicines. Dave felt like we should, so we did. Henry had a huge coughing fit about forty minutes after taking it, got a lot of junk out of his lungs, and then settled down for a very quiet, restful night of sleep, during which I don't think he woke up once coughing.

Today we're snowed in, with another 4-6 inches expected. It's going to be a quiet day. Tomorrow I expect he'll be heading off to preschool in the afternoon. He's very anxious to get back. He's been bemoaning the fact that he's missing "V" week. Tomorrow he'll be participating in his very first Valentine's Day card exchange. We spent part of Sunday making them, which was a lot of fun. I think I may be more excited about the exchange than he is, because I used to LOVE opening up my Valentine's Day mailbox and seeing all of the cards from my classmates. Good times, good times...