Damn you Pneumonia

I really should say damn you Asthma and what you do to my sweet little baby boy! If you have read any of my previous posts you may know that my son has asthma. Asthma no big deal some might say. People deal with asthma all the time right? Sure this might be true but try having a two year old that has had asthma for half of his life (do the math, since he was one) and has had pneumonia because of it not two, not three but now four times as of today! Now that is a lot of amoxicillin, x-rays, abuderal, flo-vent and prednisone for one little 23 pound peanut to endure in a short span of one year. Yesterday started like any other normal day, Abel cried when I dropped him off at school. This is his new thing, he cries every morning because he doesn't want to go but when it's time to pick him up he doesn't want to leave. Can't win! I had a funny feeling yesterday his cry was not the same as usual. Call it mothers’ intuition if you will but I knew something was brewing. School called me about 11:00 and told me he had a coughing attack so they used his emergency asthma breather. I felt ok with this since they said he stopped coughing shortly after and fell asleep for nap. When I got the second call of the day I knew it could not be a good one. "Abel just woke up from his nap and he has a fever of 104"! Now most people would hear 104 and freak out.....not us. This is familiar territory; a fever of 103-104 is not unusual for Abel. What was strange this time around was the cough he had when I picked him up. It just didn't sound normal (or what you would call normal for him). Thank God for mothers gut instincts. Moms are like detectives when it comes to their children, although I never would have believed it until I was a mother. After what seemed like half a day at the Doctors receiving breathing treatments and checking pulse-ox levels(Dr. lingo for oxygen percentage a patient is breathing in)and chest x-rays it was determined that my diagnosis was correct; pneumonia. Now I am being sarcastic when I say "my diagnosis", all I had to do was look into my little baby's eyes and I knew he had it. It didn’t take me a half a day and ANY tests to figure it out, but then again I don’t get paid to diagnose patients and I didn’t spend years in medical school either. What do I know? I just have a gut feeling that speaks to me. As I write this my baby and I are camping out on the futon mattress in the living room by the fire. He is soundly sleeping with the occasional sleep talk (the medicines do that to him). I am praying that his antibiotics this time around and the increase in his daily inhaler will nip this thing quickly and we do not go down the same path as we did last year. Power of positive thinking..."Abel will not end up back in the hospital with this DAMN pneumonia"!