Rx

I try my best to keep my kids as healthy as possible. They’ve been duped into taking a multi-vitamin every day. I did the unthinkable and lied to them; told them it was candy and after they acquired a taste for it, I revealed the ugly ‘V’ word to them and they had no choice but to forgive me. We wash our hands like surgeons. Trey, in Pavlovian fashion will come into the house, remove his shoes and walk over to the sink to scrub up. Kids are germy. Preschools are germier. Daycare is the germiest. That stomach thing that swooped through the country these last few months? Miraculously we avoided it. We had one degree of separation and still managed to keep our gastrointestinal systems in check.

Then Trey started coughing. Trey coughs. A lot. He always has. He’s been on Albuterol on and off since about six months old. I’m an old pro at knowing when he’s really sick or if he’s just being his old, hacking self. A friend of ours had this weird virus come into the family which led her boys to hack and cough and run a fever for a week. The doctor said there was nothing to do but wait it out. That funny bug came into our home as well, or so I thought. Trey ran a fever. He’d wake up and his sheets were soaked with sweat. He’d cough all through the night. I figured we were almost done with whatever this mystery bug was. After all, getting a doctor’s appointment at the Naval Hospital is only slightly easier than picking those six winning lotto numbers.

“Mommy, my armpit hurts when I cough and when I yawn.” Ok. New game plan. After jumping through hoops with the appointment people and nurse consults at the hospital I was finally given an appointment. I thought I had experienced something for the Guinness book of records when a doctor we’ve actually seen once before came in. Wow. One person, two times. She even recognized me. We were sent to radiation and then brought back for a blood draw. My little man is so awesome. He sat still while they took pictures of his insides. He bravely smiled at me, holding back the tears as they stuck that needle into his tiny arm to fill the reservoir. He earned two stickers that day, and a lollypop from me.

Upper right lobe pneumonia.

My kid has pneumonia. What? I have no idea how this developed. He’s such a little trooper. He’s been sick for so much of his life, I think a major illness would be the only thing to knock him down. Either that, or a hang nail. Then, he’d be on the couch writhing in agony needing a bandaid.