My Continuing Saga of Illness

So...in case people have been following this blog and care to some degree about my health, allow me to enlighten you on the state of my well being on this, the one month anniversary of my never ending cough. It all began as a little sore throat, soon becoming the traditional early year flu/cold/who knows. After patiently waiting a week for symptoms to improve with home remedies I was finally pressured into visiting a doctor. Diagnosis: Bronchitis. Remedy? Common antibiotics and some cough syrup with a special dose of codine. Result? Back at the doctors 4 days later with additional symptoms of fever and pain in chest. This time I got a different doctor who looked at my throat and said, "Ya, that looks pretty bad." Still told my diagnosis was bronchitis. New drugs though were offered. Now I got to take the ever potent zythromax, to be accompanied by mucinex and advair. Two weeks later, I am still coughing, pain has returned to chest, and multiple other symptoms. But no fever and I wasn't feeling crummy except for the inescapable cough. So undaunted I returned to the doctors office to see yet a third doctor (only three more to go! including my primary doctor who I haven't seen yet, so can he really be my primary doctor?). After taking chest x-rays to ensure I didn't have pneumonia (I don't) I was told that due to the severity of my previous infection, my bronchial tubes (and now I provide my own words) are being cranky and don't want to stop complaining about being sick. They remain inflamed and irritated, so that when I take deep breaths or do much in the way of activity, they want to cough. So once again I am given advair, along with some prednisone to reduce inflamation, and some inhaled albuterol to help with breathing. I was also told to take 'voice rest' so that I might one day be able to speak again louder than a horse whisper.
Congratulations, you have succeeded in reading the saga. Now we wait to see if this darned cough will ever stop.

A Great Day for a Walk

We have had a few beautiful days here this last week. Katarina and I were able to walk along the river front with Jayme's parents twice this week. Katarina enjoyed her stroller rides, most of the time. When she wasn't enjoying her stroller she was enjoying grandpa's shoulder. Jayme is still sick. Mid-week he was starting to feel better but Friday and Saturday were not very good. He assures me that he is getting better again. We'll see how long it lasts. On Thursday, when he was feeling decent, he was able to do a two hour sub job for a librarian. It is the first job that he has had since October. Like I said, it was only two hours, but at least it was something. Katarina has fallen in love with her pink blanket. She likes the texture of it. Sometimes it even helps calm her down or put her to sleep. She is just like her mom. When I was growing up I had a "slinky", a piece of material that I liked and it calmed me down. I think that Katarina is going to be very tactile like I am. We spent a lot of time with Jayme's parents this week. They were very gracious in feeding us to offset some of the burden of Jayme being sick. They fed us very well. We had leg of lamb, bbq salmon, and sweet pork tacos.

If they keep this up I may have to convince Jayme to get sick more often. I only had to clean the kitchen twice this week. We also got to see my dad this week.. He came down for Ross's last home game. Ross played well, his team won and it was fun to see everyone. Finally, we went to my mom's yesterday to celebrate birthdays, Jayme's and my 3 year old nephew, Ethan. We are so glad that we live so close to so much family. They are so much support and it is so fun to watch Katarina interact with them all. It is time for me to finish, Katarina is trying to help me type and it just isn't working out too well.

P.S. Here is our tag picture, the fourth picture in our fourth picture file. Our files are alphabetically organized and February is the fourth file, so this picture is less than a month old but is me blowing out the candles of my birthday cake at my mom's house.
P.P.S. I tried to edit a few pictures and arrangement for Virginia, but some pictures were sideways and some got accidentally removed. Deal with it.

I'm on Time!

Katarina went on her first walk in the stroller the other day. She is finally big enough that she can sit up and see what is going on during our walks. She loves it. She is so alert and likes knowing what is going on and seeing everything there is to see. I love watching her explore her world and introducing her to new things. Yesterday she was sitting in her walker while I was reading. After a few minutes her whole tone changed, she became much happier and talkative. I looked over and saw that she had found herself in the mirror on her walker. She would smile and see herself smile back and smile even bigger. It lasted a good two minutes. It is one of the cutest things she has done yet. She got a frog outfit from her uncle Bruce and aunt Annette before she was born. She is big enough now to ware it and I think she is really cute in it. On Valentines day we went over to Jayme's parents for breakfast. We had Belgian waffles with strawberries. It was so tasty. Jayme is still feeling pretty lousy. He has energy to do about one thing a day. He normally chooses the kitchen, which is a big help to me. I hope you all have a great week. Tomorrow is Jayme's birthday, the big 3-0. I hope he is feeling well enough to celebrate a little bit. :)

Better Late than Never

The sickness continues. It settled into Jayme's lungs and developed into advanced bronchitis. Jayme went back to the doctor after three days of being on medication. The doctor took one look at him and said, "yep, the medication isn't working." Like we hadn't figured that one out. Jayme got put on some stronger stuff and he is finally starting to feel a difference. He feels like there is a light at the end of the tunnel at last. Katarina went in for her four month check-up on Wednesday. I can't believe she is four months. The doctor says that she looks healthy and strong. He let her stand up for him and was very impressed with her strength. He said that she will be an early walker. He also said that she has very good looking ear drum so not to expect too many ear infections. That was really nice to hear. She is still struggling with her cold. She has mucus coming out both ends. Then she got her shots on top of that. She has spent most of the last two days sleeping, poor girl. She is very happy when she is awake though. That was another thing that the doctor was impressed with, her disposition, that she was so smiley and alert and aware of what was going on around. She is now in the 58th percentile for weight at 13 lbs 15 oz. and the 90th percentile for height, at over 25 inches. She is a growing girl. It is kind of funny though, she is in between sizes right now. She is too long for the clothes that she has been wearing and too skinny for the next size up. She will probably struggle with that for a good portion of her growing up years. I did, until I had her. We hope that everyone has a wonderful Valentines day.

Welcome to Sickville

I know that I'm three days late in posting this. We have all been sick with the nasty cold that is going around. We've been focusing on the necessities and the blog didn't make the cut. Jayme still has it pretty bad. Katarina is still congested and absolutely hates it when I suction out her nose. She has been doing a lot of extra sleeping but she is still pretty happy when she is awake, all things considered. She and I have spent most of the week in her room with a humidifier. The 25th was my birthday. We went over to my mom's to celebrate. We let Katarina try out the walker that was there. She loved it and we brought it home for her. She loves being up and seeing what is going on. Her favorite thing to do is watch the fire. She still enjoys the gym a lot, but she likes to lay sideways under it. She is getting good at grabbing the ears on the monkey that hangs down. Jayme and I are keeping things low key and trying to get better.