Enough Already!

Well the boys are sick, yet again.  Luke's little cold just seems to linger and Tyke played outside on Friday and of course came down with the croup.

We feel like Tyke ends up with the croup every time he plays outdoors and runs too hard.  It doesn't wind him or slow him down at all but it definitely makes  him one miserable boy at bedtime/nap time.  Tyke has had the croup so much in the last year plus that we feel like we are "pro" at taking care of it (not really).  In the beginning we were going to the emergency room a lot, then the doctors a lot, and now we just kind of wait and see how he does.  He did pretty good all weekend.  He had his ups and downs of sounding good and bad.  This morning as I was loading the boys in the car to take them to Grandma Cheryl's he had a major cough attack that really had a lot of bark to it.  He coughed so hard he almost threw up.  We sat outside for a few minutes leaning over the lawn, waiting for him to be sick but he never did.  I decided to not go to work and to just stay home with my sick boys and snuggle.

Luke has had a little cold again too, or does he ever really clear up?  It doesn't feel like it.  Anyway, I hadn't been too worried about him with his stuffy nose.  It's pretty much  just a normal thing for the poor guy now.  This morning after Tyke's cough attack and after unloading Luke and the diaper bags from the car, our poor baby woke up and I noticed his left eye goopy.  Not bad but enough that it made me wonder what was going on.  I called up to Dr. Fullmer's office and made an appointment for both boys at 2:20 p.m.  I knew I for sure wanted Tyke seen because we were going on day four of having this crappy croup and I figured while we were there we had better have Luke checked out so we didn't end up coming back in a day or two.

Well sure enough Tyke was diagnosed with croup and given his regular oral steroid of decadron (sp?).  He put up a good fight taking that yucky medicine but we got it in him.  Dr. Fullmer looked back at all of Tyke's medical records and was a bit concerned by all of the croup diagnoses he seen.  We told him that boy loves to be outside and needs to be able to play outside without getting sick every time!  We asked if it might be an allergy but Dr. Fullmer didn't really say.  He suggested we try giving Tyke allergy medicine, 1/2 teaspoon (a half dose) every morning for one to two weeks and see if that helps out at all.  We'll discuss our results when we go back in a couple of weeks for Luke's six (gasp!) month well check.  There's a possibility that Tyke might end up needing an inhaler or a nebulizer once or twice a day until he grows out of this croup stage.

As soon as Tyke was done being looked over it was Luke's turn.  I asked Dr. Fullmer to just check and make sure we didn't have another ear infection.  He asked me what made me think Luke had an ear infection again and I told him I didn't know but that with our luck with the colds in our house he probably had something going on.  Luke was all smiles and held Dr. Fullmer's hand while he got looked over.  Sure enough, he has another ear infection.  That's two in less than a month!  We have started round two of amoxicillin for our little guy.

We are so, so, SO ready for sick season to be over!  We need our boys to be healthy!