Friday, November 07, 2008

thinking out loud

I called the doctor yesterday. Day three of antibiotic, baby still sick. New antibiotic? Doctor leaves a message that says, yes. And if cough gets too bad bring him back in.

That's the kind of advice I like.

Too bad. What's too bad? If it's loud enough to wake me up in the middle of the night, is that too bad? If he can sleep through it, is he still okay? His breathing isn't labored - at least not the way it was the time he choked. I should say, his breathing doesn't cause me to wonder if I should call 911. But it is ... rattley. And he does have that puckered face of a baby who doesn't feel well. So does that warrant a new appointment?

He's only been on the new antibiotic 12 hours. Shouldn't I give it time to work? And yet the weekend looms. Am I dooming myself to an ER visit if I don't go in this afternoon? Worse, am I dooming HIM to breathing treatments in a hospital on Monday if we don't go in now?

Then a neighbor says, a kid from my kid's mother's day out class has RSV. And two of our neighbor friends are in the same class. So I begin to wonder - is this RSV? Neither neighbor has it, so surely not. But it could be going around. How would I know? But wait. He's been sick for 8 days, and the cough only developed 3 days ago. That's not the way RSV works, right? RIGHT?

This is what it's like to live in my head this morning.

So we're going to the doctor at 4, when I'm absolutely positive she will tell me he's fine, he doesn't have RSV, chill out and give the new antibiotic time to work already. But I am equally positive that if we don't go in this afternoon, I will spend the next two days wondering if I should have.

Happy Friday, everyone.

UPDATE:  No RSV.  Just the crud.  

4 comments:

Lisa said...

Poor baby! I hate it when teeny ones are sick. It's so hard to know what to do for them and how to make them feel better. And they just sit and look at you, all miserable-like, as if they are thinking, "Why can't I breathe, Mom?"

Kendra said...

Just read the post, also just read the update. Also just said prayer for sweet baby's health and his momma's sanity.
=-) kendra

Missy said...

Shep did get RSV when he was 4 months old. When it happened, I had no idea how serious it was - till I got home and googled and cried and cried.

The only thing I knew was that my baby was really really sick. It was like 10pm, and I didn't take him to the ER - in retrospect, I should have, or at least called the pedi. But I was in the drs office by 8:30 the next morning. Fortunately, he did not need to be hospitalized, just breathing treatments at home.

I was so scarred by that experience that every time my babies breathed slightly funny I was a wreck. I remember driving Maggie to the dr on a Sat morning when she was 3 months old, crying the whole way, listening to her breathing rattle in the backseat, knowing they were going to say she had RSV or pneumonia and needed to be admitted right away. A chest x-ray and a nose swab later it was confirmed - she had the crud.

But, better safe than sorry, right?

Missy said...

PS - when Shep did have it, he woke up with a horrible cough, dog bark cough. I thought it was croup and we ran a hot shower. But it was a deep loud cough that came on very suddenly.