What (cough) a (cough cough) day (cough) it is

My electric boy is not doing well.

What we thought was bad asthma looks like it may be whooping cough. Egad. Apparently it still exists despite immunizing. Poor thing, none of us has had a full night sleep in a week. We kept treating it as asthma with breathing treatments, puffers, inhaled steroids, you name it. Last night he woke up in a coughing fit panicking and trying to yell for me. I met him at the door of his room and he was blue -- his lips were blue, his fingernails, toes. He couldn't get enough air to do his rescue inhaler. Thank God we had the nebulizer.

Now usually I am the EMT parent, the calm one, the first responder. I can handle anything, stitches, asthma, sports injuries... but last night I freaked. I don't like blue children -- unless it's Verruca Salt and then it's her own fault for being blue. When I called the on call doc and described the week, the blueness, the panic (in Ry and me) he said it sounded like Pertussis. That's all the responsible one needed to hear at 1 am. Adrenaline let down and some Google-ing... let's just say it was a long night. Meanwhile poor Ry just keeps coughing away. We won't know for sure if it is Pertussis for another 48 hours. We can thank a nasty nasal swab for that info. Again, poor Ry. We are going to treat it like it is with mega antibiotics. So Ry will be spending the next few days eating lots of yogurt and coughing.

God bless the babies that suffer with this. I can't imagine.