Chronic Squirrel

We're starting to figure out what life in the near term is going to be with an energetic, rambunctious, lives life-at-11 girl whose lungs fill up with gunk when she gets even a mild cold.

The first cold in August occurred during her "well-visit" and the doctor was concerned enough about the wheezing she heard to give Bridget prednisone.  It cleared her up in 12 hours. Yay!!  Third round of prednisone since April....BOOOO.

Sunday morning, Bridget woke up with that croupy cough every parent knows so well.  For most folks, it would just signal a cold coming up.  And for the  most part, that's what we've had.  Except for a couple of hours in  the late afternoon and early evening in which her O2 stays around 93 with a few dips down to the upper 80s.  It hasn't stayed there long enough for us to go to the hospital, but it stays in the low 90s long enough for me to sleep with Bridget with her monitor on until it stabilizes at 95 or above.

ALSO, I have turned into an automatic night monitoring machine, waking up every hour or so to fish around the bed for the pulse ox, find it, read it, be reassured and go back to sleep.

HOWEVER, 98 and 89 look awfully similar when they are upset down and you are half asleep.

ADRENALINE, BABY!

Dave and I are both trying to figure out how to negotiate our career ambitions with a child with a chronic illness.  So far, we're not back in the hospital.  Yay!  But I find it hard to make long or short term plans when I'm pretty sure I'm going to spend part of the day putting together little piles of food and medicine and tea (I really like tea in the hospital) in case I need to throw them together to run out of the house.  Or to direct Dave to gather together if B and I are already there.

I know it's all going to be fine.  And next year at this time, we'll know SO MUCH MORE about how to handle all of this and when to worry and when to let it ride.

It all gets better. Sometimes it gets worse.  But it gets better.  Eventually.

I'm tired.  I can wake up 5 times a night to monitor B, but I can't really write as witty a blog afterwards.