A rought start to the holiday

Its been a rough few days!

Beanie got what seems like her 110th  cold of this Fall/Winter season. Poor kids has been on/off sick since Sept. It does not help that she is constantly touching her face/mouth/nose with her hands - so germs have an easy way of getting to her :-(

As with every other cold she gets, this one morphed into a whole coughing nightmare. Ever since she got RSV at about 7 mos, most cold end up with a really bad cough. And by bad cough I mean constant couhging for hours!  She was given a nebulizer as a baby, but the machine is super noisy and she hated it, so we always had the 24 hrs of coughing fits. Then I got her the inhaler with a spacer, which she is okay using, and that helps in some situations, but not all.

This past month or so it seems her cough has gotten worse. In early Nov, I took her to urgent care on a Sunday and they gave her Prednisone, which calmed things down.

Then early this month she had another cold which thankfully turned out to be a "normal" cold...runny nose and cough, but the type of cough that is typical to a cold.

This Sunday, she started with a slight runny nose and complaining of an earache. She did not look too distressed, so I decided to give her some Motrin and wait it out. That afternoon the coughing started, but a dose of Ventolin seemed to calm it down and we had a decent night.

Monday morning we were up at 5 am and the non-stop coughing began.

I had a light schedule at work that AM, so at 11am I took her into the pediatrician. Her Dr finally agreed that this coughing was getting a bit ridiculous and put her on twice a day Flovent to calm down her lungs.  We had talked multiple times before about Reactive Airway Disease and cough-variant asthma being seen in kids who had RSV as babies, and that seems to be what she now has :-(

We will probably keep the Flovent going in the winter so if she does get a cold it does not blow up into a bigger issue. Colds seem to trigger her symptoms, because otherwise when she is well she is fine...no night cough, no coughing upon exertion etc which are classic asthma symptoms.

That was it and we came back home.The coughing continued despite the new med which I was told will take a few days to kick in.  I felt so bad for Beanie since her tummy started to hurt and her throat hurt with the coughing. Then came the fever later that night and throw-ups due to the cough.  A horrible night (Mon) was followed by some improvement on Tue morning.

She seemed to do better, fever was lower and coughing was much improved, and I felt a bit relieved.

That was short lived!

By 1pm she was back to having another coughing episode. Coughing every minute or so (maybe less). Her eyes were red, watering and she looked so pathetic, so I took her back in at 4pm to the Ped. They swabbed her for Strep and Flu which were both negative. I practically begged them for oral steroids to calm down this episode. The Flo.vent can take days to kick in and Beanie needed relief NOW!!!!!!

They agreed to do a couple of days of the oral steroids and I gave it to her last night. We still had a very rough night, but today has been much better.

I hate this coughing becase there is not much I can do to help her. I do the steaming and rubbing vicks on foot etc, but its so sad to see her cough like that.

Today she was much improved - thanks to the oral steroids. She was coughing much less, fever was gone and she was cheerful and happy. She is sleeping now and I better get to bed. I am sick too and finally took a day off today to mentally and physically recover.

Hoping the worst is over and now with the Flovent we can avoid these episodes in the future. I do want to research some more natural options, but for now, I am glad she is much improved and can enjoy Christmas.