You know how when you live with something long enough, you stop noticing the small things? Yeah well I guess I have become adept at ignoring the small things that go on in our house and it will sound bad because I am the mom and all but whatever. Elena had a cough. I guess it was pretty bad but I didnt really notice it being too severe. After all, withthe numerous colds and bugs that float around my children on a regular basis, it is somewhat tough to differentiate what each cough means. Except that I should perhaps have noticed that hre breathing was beoming sometimes laboured. And that she was tired a bit ore because it was getting abit tough to breathe. OK, it sounds worse that it was but by today when she had all but lost her voice to a rough barking cough that was leaving her a bit breathless and a lot cranky, it was time to sit up and take notice. I took her to a doctor and they told me that she had a case of croup.
Solution? A single dose of steroids to relieve the swelling of her larynx and calm her cough. OK, sound easy enough. But. No pharmacy wanted to fill a prescription for a single liquid dose--6 mg of steroids so they told me that they were giving us tablets that we would have to crush up and hide in semi-liquid stuff like yoghurt.
Ok, no rpoblem. We have yoghurt, and Elena will eat pretty much anything. This was going to be a breeze! Of course what we didnt count on was that our child was brighter than we gave her credit for. We set the yoghurt laced bowl in front of her and handed her a spoon when she refused to be fed. She then proceeded to eat around the bright blue powder. Silly us for trying to hide it in peach yoghurt. So I ended up force feeding her the powdery part (not wanting to mix it up too much in case she didnt end up eating the whole bowl and 3/4 of the powder ending up in the drain anyway) and after much ado, most of it ended up inside her. Shortly after dinner, she fell asleep and when she awoke, lo and behold, everything was as it should be--no cough, no laboured breathing, no hoarse voice. My daughter, a testament to the miracle of modern medicine.
Naturally, Julia started her own coughing fit just after my celebratory dance. Le sigh.
9:46 p.m. - 2005-12-06