Sick, Sick, Sick and Sick

That describes my family right now.  Every last one of us is sick, and it sucks!

Ryan started with a nasty cough on my birthday... that was over a month ago on May 4th, and he is still coughing today!  Thankfully, we think that his "cold" is almost over.  Our family physician warned us that this cough/cold that is going around lasts for over a month, so at least we know that Ryan is par for the course!

Myers started coughing on May 27th, and he has progressively gotten worse since then.  Our doctor ordered a chest x-ray for him just a couple of days ago to rule out pneumonia, and thankfully it came back negative.  So we are currently treating Myers for croup/bronchitis.  He is doing GREAT with the breathing masks/nebulizer treatments, so that makes the healing process at least a little easier on Mommy!  We had purchased a nebulizer for Reagan back during her early days with RSV... that little machine has definitely been put to good use over the last few years!  The hardest part for Myers, and it really ended up not being that bad at all, was getting him to take the concentrated steroid syrup.  Getting a 6 month old baby to "chug" down 80 mls/3 ounces of medicine all at once is no easy task.  But with Reagan and Ryan dancing around in the background to keep him distracted, drop by drop he drank it all in about 25 minutes time. 

Reagan and I started coughing on May 29th.  The medicines and inhalers have at least prevented she and I from becoming too terribly sick, although you wouldn't believe me if you heard us coughing.  I swear our neighbors must think that our house is infected with tuberculosis or something!

The main problem with Reagan's health right now is her ears.  She is battling recurrent severe ear infections... she had just gotten over an ear infection in her right ear when it suddenly came back stronger than ever, accompanied by a matching infection in her left ear.  

These ear infections are only making our current worry of partial hearing loss for Reagan that much worse.  Our family doctor has confirmed that she has significant scar tissue damage on her right ear drum, and that the scar tissue is probably the cause of her hearing loss.  At first we just thought that she had "selective" hearing like most 5 year olds, and we were constantly telling her that she needed to listen more.  When we realized that she was actually missing entire sentences that we were saying, we discovered that we had a HEARING problem on our hands... not a LISTENING problem.  Once Ryan and I sat down together and really started analyzing the situation, we realized that it had been going on for quite some time and had been progressively getting worse.  Her hearing issues have also started to take a toll on her speech, to the point that people who aren't around her on a daily basis to "know her language" can't always understand anymore.   We have an appointment with an audiologist on August 15th to decide what our next steps need to be, so for now we wait and hope for no more ear infections!  (August 15th is considered an urgent appointment time... otherwise we would have to wait until November or December to see the audiologist.  Government Health Care isn't always the greatest...)

The good news about all of this... Apparently, stress combined with lack of sleep mixed in with a nasty cough is the latest diet trend!  I had just about decided that I was not going to lose the last 6 pounds of baby weight without doing some form of serious exercise.  No need to worry... I have finally broken the barrier and now only have 1 pound left of "Myers weight" to lose.  So, once we are all healthy, hopefully I will be able to do that serious exercising to lose 15 extra pounds as well!