hamster pox

I have always wanted to call in sick with Hamster Pox, and now that I stay at home I encourage all my friends and family to do the same... no one has taken me up on it yet, but I'm sure it's only a matter of time. It sounds so dangerous, so nasty & contagious... so jet-setter's exotic vacation parasite-like.

But really, I'm sick. Everyone's sick, OH how we're sick. *cough cough*

Besides my four weeks of unrelenting congestion (but who's counting? Thank you allergies... and thank YOU Claritin, the drug that doesn't work) we have had a stomach bug and now a cold make the rounds at our household. Kids are so germy, blech.

And to top it all off, this Sunday after Aidan had a night with allergies (oh yeah, he's got them too) or a cold, he woke up wheezing -- not a good thing, people. Something similar happened last November when Wesley was 2 weeks old, and Aidan woke up with a fever and wheezing after 2 nights of Croup and ended up with an oxygen saturation somewhere in the 70%-range. After two hideous nebulizer treatments where I had to hold my screaming 2 year old for half-an-hour-plus, we were sent home with an inhaler, steroids, and an antibiotic, just in case it was pneumonia or something.

Long story short, it happened again on Sunday. This time, though, he hid it better, so I felt awful when we got to the doctor's and his oxygen saturation was at 77% -- he was talking in sentences, and didn't seem to be working very hard to breathe at all. Same in-office treatment with the nebulizer, same set of prescriptions, and here we are 2 days later. His saturation is still only about 91-92% though, so we've been going in every day while we finish the course of meds he got so we can make sure he doesn't get any worse.

He's doing a ton better than he was Sunday, I just wish he was getting better, faster. It's hard to watch and I can't help but worry that I might miss the signs if it happened again because I still have mommy-guilt over Sunday.

The doctors aren't going to say asthma right now, since it's only happened twice -- obviously if this becomes a recurring thing in our house we'll have to start doing some tests. I've spoken with several people who have said their young kids had wheezing episodes with some viruses and outgrew it as they got older... so I'm crossing my fingers.

So anyway, that's why I haven't been around. Nothing as exciting or exotic as hampster pox, I'm afraid. Unfortunately it's not as fictitious, either.

Now will someone come take my sick kids tonight so I can get some sleep????

(I'm serious by the way)