Woe is Monito

We all have a cold. I'm in the end stages, H-Mama is dabbling but not succumbing, Pequita is snotty and coughs to the point of gagging in the night. We are all better than my poor teeny tiny baby (um, if teeny tiny means over the 100th percentile.) Monito is SICK. He hacks, coughs, can't breathe out of his nose for the snot, and wheezes. H-Mama (who was home from work yesterday and again today) and I took them both to the doc yesterday in hopes there was a magic medicine that would make them sleep better so we could sleep better. No such luck. Pequita was deemed healthy but cold-stricken, and was told to wait it out. Monito had a detectable wheeze (no shit - I had been sleeping next to that sound for two nights, which was why we were at the pediatricians.) The doc wanted to find out what was what so had him hooked up to a nebulizer (a small, loud machine that aerosolizes* medicine for inhalation) full of albuterol and a tiny baby-sized plastic face mask. H-Mama took Pequita to the play area in the waiting room so she could lick all the toys the other sickies have played with while I stayed in the exam room clutching a crying unhappy baby to my chest singing to him with the lights turned off, the only way he would tolerate the treatment. It was a long 7 minutes. Since his wheeze was lessened after the albuterol, the doc on call diagnosed asthma. Said this could be his only instance of it, it could last throughout his childhood or could be a lifelong affliction, there's no way to know. Three hours later, we were home with a box of albuterol and our very own $199 nebulizer (thank you, Huge Insurance Company) with which to torture our boy every four hours.

And torture we did. At his first treatment, he started crying upon hearing the loud thumping engine of the super-tiny neb machine, and graduated to a full-on angry/scared scream upon application of the mask to his face. And continued to scream for the full 10 minutes. Pequita looked on in horror and got increasingly upset, until H-Mama removed her from the room and distracted her. The boy and I sat and cried on the couch until it was over. He then collapsed into a feverish lump of clinging baby, and slept for over an hour. We were instructed to repeat this every four hours when he was wheezing. I made an executive decision to skip the nighttime treatments, judging that sleep was AS important as not wheezing. H-Mama concurred. This morning he was no worse, and on my sister's advice I called our Lovely Acupuncturist. (My sis is in the process of getting her degree in Acupuncture in a different city, and said that there is much to be done to help with asthma with needles, acupressure and herbs. I've been getting treatments from my in-town Lovely Acupuncturist for over 8 years for arthritis and most other ailments; I use Western Medicine as a last resort. She is fitting us in at noon. I am so grateful!

* I believe I made that word up. Sorry.