Second Trip

I failed to mention in my last post that Seth was diagnosed with acute bronchitis. "Acute bronchitis? That's different than ugly bronchitis isn't it," Seth asked as we left the ER that night. I laughed till I almost cried.

"No son. It means you have a severe case of bronchitis." What I didn't know at the time was acute bronchitis is highly contagious. There was something about the diagnosis that gnawed at me. We've had bronchitis before, but they've never called it "acute."

When we arrived home, I looked it up on the trusty internet. Great. Now everyone in the family will get it, I fumed. The dawn of the next day did not bring good news. Not only was Seth hacking his head off, he was throwing up too. Motrin was not controlling his fever, so in the early afternoon, I left Robert with my hubby, and off we headed to the ER again.

The day before we only had to wait an hour, this time the ER waiting room was wall-to-wall people, and we had to wait seven hours; not fun when you have a sick, bored and cranky child. I tried to started a conversation with a young boy seated near me, but the mother glared at me and moved with child to another part of the waiting room. "What's her problem? I was just being friendly," I huffed.

Seth, who had been dozing in a chair beside me, opened his eyes and studied my appearance. "Probably because you look like crap," he reasoned before shutting his eyes and resuming his nap. No way, I can't look that bad. Curious, I went to the bathroom to check out my reflection in the mirror. My short hair lay on my head like a mound of melted dark chocolate, and dark circles were under my eyes, giving me that hated raccoon look. I left the bathroom and back to my seat, wishing for a paper bag to put over my head.

A little later, I felt a tightening sensation in my windpipe and chest. I'm very familiar with this feeling. Oh crap! I can't be getting bronchitis! This can't be happening, I thought. Well, I won't let it happen. I set my jaw stubbornly and stomped over to the coffee machine. Maybe some coffee will loosen everything up. Wrong! The coffee was so weak you could read a paper through it, and it did nothing to help me. As time progressed, I began my barking, sea-lion sounding, cough. My entire body ached, and I longed for my bed.

Finally, we were called into an exam room where we waited for another couple of hours. If you're keeping track of the time, you're not mistaken, we waited a total of nine hours; seven in the waiting room, two in the exam. The doctor, a friendly guy, informed me that in addition to having bronchitis, Seth had a stomach virus. Lovely!

After a quick trip to Walgreens to have the script filled, we made it back home at a little after midnight. I soon found out that Robert had bronchitis too, so all of us had a turn with the nebulizer (breathing treatment machine).

This does have it's upside. The kids are better, I'm better and getting some work done on a story I've been putting off.