Thank Goodness for Steroids!!

No - this post isn't about Barry Bonds or any other professional athlete. It's about Rachel. And no - we're not trying to bulk her up for sports!! HaHa!! Towards the end of last week Rachel started getting a snotty nose and coughing a little bit - not uncommon for her since she does have allergies and asthma. It wasn't anything really bad, and she actually had a checkup with the allergist on Thursday afternoon. Everything went fine there and he said her lungs sounded great - no wheezing at all!!! Friday she was pretty much the same - snot and cough. Friday evening the children's choir from church had been invited to sing at a local school's carnival, so we went to that. Rachel coughed, but still nothing horrible. By bedtime Friday night, she was coughing quite a bit more and was really congested. We had already been using her Xopenex inhaler every 4 hours, so we were hoping that would help with the coughing. When it was time for Robert & I to go to bed, I decided to just go and sleep with Rachel. Otherwise, everytime she coughed we both were waking up. Around midnight, Rachel was coughing and rolled over towards me and she had tears rolling down her cheeks. She was having a horrible time trying to breathe. She was really struggling to get a breath. We immediately used her inhaler again, tried to calm her down, and let her drink some ice water. The cold water will sometimes help. We waited a few minutes and she still was struggling and she was panicking. I guess I would panic too if I felt like I couldn't breathe. Lucky for us, the doctor has given us a prescription for steroids to keep at home to try to keep us out of the ER. (Just for history, we've ended up in the ER several times because of needing steroids to help one of the girls breathe.) Anyway, Robert & I made the decision that either we gave her steroids then, or we were going to have to go to the ER. We decided to give her a dose of steroids. Then Robert put her in the car and drove around with the air on full blast. (If it had been wintertime, we could've just gone outside for a few minutes, but since it's not cold outside, the ac was our next option.) When they got back, she was breathing a little better and had calmed down. I slept with her the rest of the night and we didn't have anymore bad episodes. Saturday we continued with the inhaler every 4 hours and did another dose of steroids. She played her soccer game and played well. Looks like we avoided an ER trip! YEAH!!! She's still coughing, but not as bad, and we haven't had anymore bad episodes. Tomorrow is her 6 year check-up at the pediatrician's office, so he'll be able to really check her out and listen to her to make sure that she's on the mend. I'm just so glad that we had steroids on hand just in case of a situation like we had Friday night. We've been through it enough that we know when the girls need a dose of steroids, and it's a pain having to load them up in the middle of the night to go to the ER just to tell the doctors "All she needs is a dose of steroids." This way, we saved a trip to the ER and the cost of a trip to the ER! Thank goodness for a doctor's forethought!

Kate - it brought back memories of Fall Creek Falls last year - not fun!!!