The last two weeks...

...have at times been a bit of a blur. Sunday, April 13th we took Turner to the pediatric clinic because she had fever, had been congested, and was pretty much screaming her head off. The diagnosis - pus pockets on her throat and some type of virus that was causing a raw throat. I stayed home Monday, my mom kept her Tuesday, and by Wednesday we thought things were on the upswing. Not so... The night of Friday, April 17th we were back at the pediatric clinic because she seemed to have gotten worse (coughing and wheezing) and the screaming had returned. New diagnosis - the doc thought it was RSV (although the test showed that to be untrue). They ended up calling it bronchiolitis, basically meaning that the mucus was down in her lungs and we would need to do albuterol breathing treatments with a nebulizer three times a day to help this situation improve.

It is now Sunday, April 27th (14 days after this all started) and our precious daughter is FINALLY back to her old self. No more waking herself up 10 times during the night coughing her head off, no more coughing until she makes herself gag and throw up mucus (yes - that really happened, more than ten times), no more fever, no more sucking out her nose, no more pitiful eyes that cried real tears because she hurt so badly.

Here is a picture of her during a breathing treatment. Some brilliant parent realized that infants are frightened by the larger mask, so they created a pacifier attachment that sprays the albuterol directly toward the nose while the child sucks the pacifier. Brillant!! (However, we did go to using the mask after we realized that we could squeeze the morning and night treatments in before she woke or after she went to sleep - MUCH easier!!)

Mark and I realized several things over the course of the last two weeks. 1)Turner has spoiled us by being such a pleasant and sweet baby - we often take for granted how happy she is all the time. We also take for granted how she can normally entertain herself for a little while so that we can accomplish things around the house. This didn't happen while she was sick and weren't used to having to hold/entertain her 24/7! 2)We have a whole new perspective on parents who have to watch their children suffer with terminal or critical illness - our daughter only had a "cold" and it was torture to watch her struggle to breathe, cough, etc. We have NO idea how those parents keep it together. 3) We realized even more how much of parenting is a guessing game. Mark and I don't like to be unable to "fix things/make things better" so this was hard for us.

We are praising God for how He has healed her little body and restored her to her old self!!