Scared Out Of My Mind, but not the good scared, like Haunted Mansion

 

Stare at the photo, ok, I know my room is a disaster.  It is last on my list of places to fix up.  We don't even have proper bedding since Eric can't stand the down comforter and I haven't replaced it with something cooler (not cooler like sparkly shoes, cooler like temperature).

    Moving on: Ethan's asthma has been horrific.  He got the flu and went a solid 4 weeks coughing more often than not.  We had already called our Pediatrician at home (got steroids), gone into a family doc (got prescription cough pills), but nothing was helping.  It got to the point where one morning he couldn't talk he was just coughing constantly.  I was so scared.  He was coughing like he was dying, the sound...the sound was just terrifying.  

     Knowing that the pediatrician's office wouldn't get back to us for hours if I called them I rushed him over to Urgent Care (which I hate).  When the doctor came in he literally chewed me out for not contacting the Peds office.  I explained that they would take hours to get back to me and I was scared Ethan would stop breathing or hurt himself.  He scoffed and told me to call the pediatrician next time.  I started crying and he rolled his eyes and left the room.  Ethan was playing on his Nintendo DS so luckily I don't think he noticed any of this.  He then started coughing so hard it sounded like he was tearing up his throat and the doctor came back in.  He actually looked worried and ordered X-rays and got a nebulizer out to immediately try and stop the cough.  He said that he was worried Ethan would tear a lung and start coughing up blood.  That freaked Ethan out, because he is 10, and really who wants to hear that you could start coughing up blood?

     The X-rays showed that is lungs were clear, there was no fluid or masses or anything else bad (he did have a giant gas bubble in his stomach which made him laugh pretty hard). He gave us a prescription for some cough medicine and a nebulizer for home and some meds to go in it.  Unfortunately he just handed me a stack of little papers that had the most atrocious writing on it that the people at the medical supply store couldn't even read it (and they deal with him more than I do), so I made the mistake of asking what they said.  He literally slowed down his speech like you do for someone who doesn't speak English and has had a massive head injury, and told me they were prescriptions.  I thought he was going to call them in, so I tried to clarify, he rolled his eyes again and said he did, but that one was for renting the nebulizer.  I asked why there were two papers then, and he huffed and in the most sarcastic tone I have EVER heard from anyone over the age of 16 said "One is for school.  You did need a note, right?"  I will do everything in my power to never see him again, even if it involves a baseball bat, a lamp, and my Gone With The Wind collector Barbies!

     We still don't know what is going on.  We did get over to the pediatrician, and he tested Ethan for pertussis, and listened to his lungs, but that was all negative.  We think it was just his asthma overreacting, like it always does, to virus'.  He had to take a couple days off from school, use a nebulizer 4 times a day, and take about 80 medicines.  Since the nebulizer treatment takes about 15 minutes each time I set him up with a DVD on my bed to make it a little more comfortable.  Livi thought it was great and immediately made herself and all 500 stuffed animals she owns comfortable.

Things I learned:
1. Never seeing that Urgent Care doctor again.
2. Flu shots really didn't work this year.
3. Ethan needs to be put in a bubble so he never gets another virus again.
4. All three kids will deal with the noise of a nebulizer if it means I let them all lay in my bed and watch a movie at full volume.
5. We are in a LOT of trouble when our Pediatrician/friend moves
6. REALLY never seeing that doctor again.