Sick Girl Went to the Doctor

The rest of the night was quieter, with only 3-4 visits to anxiously check on Calliope. I turned off the damn monitor at some point -- too many whines that I didn't need to hear -- but kept my bedroom door ajar for the more serious upsets.

It's a weird Mommy ability, this thing where you find yourself vaulting across the room and down the hall before your brain has registered consciousness.

The wheezing seemed better during the night though she developed a slight fever.

I wanted to make sure she was wheezing when we went to the doctor, so she could see what was really going on, but not wheezing enough to make my girl seriously uncomfortable.

So I gave her just one puff on the inhaler, which seemed perfect. She stopped wheezing for a little while, but it was back in full force by the time we were safely at the doctor's office.

We did a couple more puffs at the doctor's office, and walked out armed with a fistful of prescriptions for oral steroids, inhaled steroids, a nebulizer, and saline respules for the nebulizer. I am to give Calliope the oral steroids for 3-5 days and the inhaled steroids at least until the end of March. Yikes. I know it's a tiny amount of medication -- less than a five day course of oral steroids -- but it just sounds so serious, daily steroids.

And she's got a diagnosis of possible asthma.

The doctor, once again, couldn't locate Calliope's eardrums, given her abundant ear wax (sorry, TMI), but decided not to stress poor Calliope with more searching, given that Calliope didn't have a fever.

Naturally, her temperature went up to 101.3 this afternoon.

So now I will spend Thanksgiving week anticipating having to take next Monday off work to get an ear infection diagnosed.

Just like I -- accurately -- predicted that she'd be getting sick just before Thanksgiving.

I talked to my mom, my sister, and my cousin, and luckily everyone is relatively content with the new plan for Calliope and me to stay with my cousin, to shield my mom and her compromised immune system from Calliope's hacking cough.

Now there's just the horrible weather forecast on Wednesday to worry about... Being stuck for hours in an airport with a less-than-fully-well toddler during naptime could be very, very ugly. I know there are bigger problems in the world but oh, I could appreciate some luck on this front!