High Maintenance Mom

My family has been grumpy recently. Really grumpy. And every member of my family has a runny nose. I was the first to go to a doctor and find out I had a bad sinus infection. By day five of antibiotics, I was still miserable, had trouble breathing, and a non-productive cough (when you feel like there is fluid in your chest but no amount of coughing relieves the feeling). Because I was so miserable, I finally took N to the doctor with the symptoms of runny nose and my favorite mom diagnosis, "just not himself". We found that he too had a sinus infection, which was better than hearing he is just two...

The morning of our appointment went like this. I called the doctor at 8:30 when they opened and was able to get an appointment for 10:15. S took B to school while I put in Firebusters (a movie we took out of the library) for N. I then forgot what time the appointment was, called the nurse, and somehow managed to leave too late to be on time. N was less than helpful and I was unable to help him understand why he had to move faster. When I finally broke down crying in the car, he said, "Don't cry mommmy." Which made me cry more. He then started with "Take a deep breath, it will make you feel better, it's what we do at school" followed by many examples of deep breathing. It was one of those cute moments that made me smile and feel good about his preschool.

It turns out that kids do not show sinus infections the same way we do and a runny nose of more than 7 to 10 days is often an indication. N's nose had been a faucet of many colors for almost a month so he was probably as unhappy as I was. Another indication of an infection is bad breath. I'm always amused by how I never notice the absence of bad breath but the presence of bad breath is shocking. After our encouraging appointment we returned to the car where N pee'd in his seat before we left the parking lot. At that point I called my husband, begged for help, and then took the day off to figure out why I wasn't getting better.

A trip to the allergist identified my returning asthma (exercise and allergy-induced) and I was put on inhaled steroids. Our new health insurance (not a change by choice) does not cover Zyrtec (the allergy medication that works for me) as well as our previous health insurance, which I had thought didn't cover it very well. So I had been trying Claritin (over the counter and available as the generic AllerClear at Costco), which it turns out doesn't work for some (many) people but has good marketing.

I'm hoping we all get better fast because our preschool has exciting activities planned for this year's Week of the Young Child (April 22-28).

Here is a link to more information about coughs, colds, and sinus infections on the Dr. Sears site.