Bronchiolitis

I totally had to google that so that I would spell it correctly.

Bronchiolitis.

Two days before we left for Jazz Fest I ended up at the pediatrician's office with Ruby. She woke up with a little bit of a weepy eye. Not anything to cause too much concern, but with us leaving town, Lehr and I agreed we should probably get it checked out. The pediatrician agreed that Ruby didn't have pink eye, but was likely starting to fight off some kind of virus. She prescribed some eye drops for us to keep her eyes 'clean' and sent us on our way.

 The morning of our departure, Ruby started coughing and was a bit congested. Still nothing major, as she'd been working on her first tooth for a few weeks. She woke up once during the night on Wednesday, but went back down easily. She was a rock star on Thursday, enjoying Jazz Fest and eating everything in site. Thursday night, however, she woke up three or four times, coughing and stuffed up.

Friday morning found Ruby fine again; as long as she was sitting up, her congestion was tolerable and she was her usual self. Unfortunately Friday night was too much to ignore any longer. Unless Lehr or I was holding her on our chest (upright), Ruby could not sleep. Her congestion would not let up, which meant she was coughing and snorting all night. I ended up with the last shift before morning, and when I brought Ruby into the room where Lehr was sleeping, I told him that we were going to have to go home. He immediately agreed. We woke the kids just after 7 and grabbed breakfast quickly so we could get on the road.

We planned to drive straight to the after hours care that our pediatrician recommended in the past. They were only open until 7PM, so we knew we'd be cutting it close. When we were about two hours away, I had Lehr call our doctor to make sure they still recommended urgent care, given her symptoms. As any parent would expect, the nurse on-call recommended going straight to the ER. (Any time you're dealing with respiratory stuff, it's better to be safe than sorry.) So I dropped the family off and Ruby and I went straight to Children's Healthcare of Atlanta. (SOO blessed to have that available to us!)

The ER docs and nurses suctioned her nose, gave her a breathing treatment, and one dose of antibiotics. The doc saw fluid in one of her ears, but it wasn't infected. She didn't want us to wait and see though; better to treat it as though it were already infected. Outside of the fact that Ruby was exhausted (it was 7:30 before we even pulled up to the hospital and she's normally asleep at 7), it was a painless process. Two weeks later she was off of the inhaler and only had a slight lingering cough.