Monday, February 21, 2011

Sick kiddos and germy clinics

Our 5 year old has a nasty cough.  She has RAD, she gets this nasty cough once in a while, only this time the nebs didn't seem to be doing anything. 

I take her in to our walk-in clinic early Sunday morning.  She is full of energy, she got herself  all dressed up for Mass in a really cute skirt and her pretty shoes, she's happy.  Then we walk in.  We see all the really sick kids.  We see ALOT of sick kids, the kind just laying there heating up their momma's laps.  I wanted to turn and run.  I was standing there looking down at my little ball of energy thinking...why are we here?  Why do we want to be here, sitting for who knows how long, with all these air born germs flying around?  So, we did run.  We left, and fast.

We went to the Urgent Care near our house on the way home.  She was 3rd.  I kept her away from everyone.  Her cough sounded pretty bad, and we did get a few looks when she did.  But, she was still the little smiling bundle of energy lighting up the room.  Their kids were laying there looking miserable.  I almost felt bad going in front of them, but I also wanted to get away as soon as we could.  The doc was nice enough - but later that night we thought maybe he misdiagnosed her.  He said she had croup.  It's been awhile but I do know that croupy cough sound.  Nathan had chronic croup for years, it's scary watching your child not be able to breathe.  This wasn't her.  The sound wasn't the same, and she was having no problems getting enough air (just these really gunky coughing spells).

So, we decided to brave the germ world again.  This time at our clinic as soon as they opened.  Yippee.   I think we got there first.  Long story short....she has pneumonia which probably came about from a virus coupled with her RAD. 

But....what do you do about germs at doc offices?  We normally bring our own books.  I don't mean to sound like a germ-a-phobe or anything.  But, really, I try to avoid the doc office during flu season because we often come home with something worse than we went with.   And, while I like to think I'd be the same whether I had 1 child or 7 like we do, but one thing about getting sick in a big family....You either don't sleep for a week with everyone sick at once, or you are isolated from the world for WEEKS while is slowly makes its way through the family.  When this happens I almost feel sorry for the "not sick" ones, they know it's coming.  And they don't like what they see.

Back to germy offices....we didn't have a chance to grab books this morning, I was very intent on getting in there before most of the other sick kids.  Elizabeth did ask to grab my IPod on the way out the door.  So, while we were there she watched Toy Story (something I had put on there to appease my 3 year old during a very long car ride up north if need be).  She kindly paused it whenever someone came in the room to check her out, but did watch it the entire time the doctor was talking to me.  As he was leaving she asked me if she could see one of the books hanging on the wall.  I told her, "no, you cannot look at any of the books, you can only watch Toy Story right now".  I got this sort of side ways glance from the doctor as he was leaving....and I was trying to politely bumble out something that sounded better than..."your books are germy".  Hmmm, I wonder if he's going to go back to all those annual forms where I checked the  Watches TV 0-2 hours per day box and change them to Lets her child look at books 0-2 hours per day.

4 comments:

LayCarmeliteInTraining said...

excuse my ignorance. What is RAD?

RealMom4Life said...

That's OK. I should have clarified. All it is is Reactive Airway Disease. My 5 has it, my 9 year old used to. Basically (as far as I get it) - it's a kid that occassionally needs albuterol and possibly a steroid (like asthma) to get past a cold. Their airways just don't function as well as they should. Some RAD kids develop asthma. Henry shows no signs of asthma and outgrew RAD years ago. Anna has asthma but never bad RAD as a kid.

My guess is it's just something that was always around now they have a word for it.

The Road Scholar said...

EWW! I hate doctors/dentists offices, too. We are looking at visiting the dentist 6x in the next three weeks to fit in various treatment plans (including tooth extractions!) 12 days after our last visit, the littlest contracted croup, then the three year old got it and then the 5 year old. We have to sit there 1-2 hours in some cases. We'll be bringing lots of hand sanitizer.

I thought our doctor had misdiagnosed our croup, but it went away after a shot of decadron, so either he was right on or the decadron fixed whatever else it was.

I hope Elizabeth is feeling better soon!

Danielle M. said...

Lurker here, but I have to comment on this... No worries, I am the same way. I HATE going to the dr. With kids, someone always gets sick. I NEVER let them touch toys, books, etc. there, and I use purell in, during and out. I have even, in the height of flu season when I had to go b/c someone def. Had an ear infection, or pneumonia, I don't remember, put snow gloves on the rest of the kids and wouldn't let them take them off the whole time. At least it was cold, you have to do what you have to do to protect yourself!!