The 100 day cough

This week has been a hard week in our house, if I'm being 100% honest, it's been a rough FEW weeks.  I noticed towards the end of our visit in Illinois, Lily was starting a dry cough.  I didn't think anything of it at first and chalked it up to be just the difference in the weather.  Once we got home though, her cough didn't get any better, it progressively got worse.  She was waking up in the middle of the night coughing so hard and gagging herself... it was absolutely awful.  I called her pediatrician and set up an appointment to bring her in.  Her cough started to make her gag and then from there she began vomiting.  Of course, when I took her to the doctor she showed NONE of these symptoms to him.  From the information I gave him he thought that she was developing a severe case of reflux.  This all started 2 Thursdays ago.  Over the weekend, Lily wasn't getting any better.  In fact, it was getting worse by the day and Chris and I weren't sleeping.  She would wake herself up gasping for air and making a horrible sound.  I called Monday morning and took her back to the doctor.  Once again, she showed nothing but happiness with Dr. Coco, however he knows we are not the type of parents that just bring our kids in for every little thing.  He decided that Lily needed to see a GI specialist, but went ahead and gave her an antibiotic for her cough even though her lungs were clear.  The following day we went to see yet another doctor.  Thankfully (as scary as they are) she had a few coughing spell while we were there and finally somebody with a medical degree witnessed what we have been experiencing for 2 weeks now.  She was being weighed on the scale in the hallway and it was so bad that the doctor came running out of her office not knowing if she was ok or not.  Once we began talking to her she told us that she didn't think Lily had reflux.  She wanted us to go get an x-ray to make sure she didn't swallow something or had a blockage in her airway.  If the x-ray came back clear, she thought it would be a good idea to see a pulmonologist because she could have whooping cough.... WHAT?!?!?!  Scary!!!!!  That same day we went to have an x-ray done and the results came back negative.  After talking to our pediatrician, he decided that we should come back in and he would do the pertussis test on her but we wouldn't get the results back for a few days.  Three doctors visits in one day.  My poor sweet pea had been through the ringer, but she was still happy as can be.  I'm sure all of my mommy friends can only imagine at this point the thoughts that are running through my head.  I have a sick child and there is absolutely nothing I can do for her to help her feel better.  I was literally emotionally, physically, and mentally exhausted.  Later that night, my mom calls to tell me that my grandfather had a stroke.  I was pretty upset the rest of the night and I know Chris was worried about me so he decided to stay home and help me with the kids the next day. 

Our sweet pediatrician was so worried about her that on Wednesday he actually called on his day off to check on her. He was very concerned especially since he has never heard her do any of this himself and told us not to hesitate to call him if we felt the need to.  Wednesday and Thursday were fairly decent days for Lily.  She didn't have too many coughing spells and she seemed to hold down most of her feedings, we thought for sure she was doing better.  Thursday evening, that all changed.  Chris was on his way home from work and I honestly didn't think he could have gotten home fast enough.  We were noticing that over the past 24 hours she didn't have much of an appetite or as many wet diapers.  I was feeding her around 5 o'clock and she took about 2 ounces of milk.  She went into a coughing spell and then began to vomit.  I have never been more scared in my entire life!!  It just coming up over and over again, I truly didn't think it was going to ever stop.  Once she finally did stop, I picked up the phone and called Dr. Coco.  At that point he had enough as well and made a conference call to 2 of the doctors at Children's.  Apparently they had spoke about Lily earlier because her doctor still was not ok with what was going on with her and was afraid that maybe she needed to be admitted to the hospital.  After Chris got home, we headed off to the hospital where once again she was acting perfectly fine.  The ER doctor was one of the doctors that our pediatrician talked to about Lily earlier that day so he already had some background info.  He wanted us to go ahead and feed her while we were there since she had not had anything since the afternoon and it was already about 9 o'clock at night.  Luckily, while we were in the ER she had another spell and began to vomit again.  After her milk, they decided to try pedialyte and she couldn't even keep that down.  Since she was projectile vomiting and she was already mildly dehydrated the admitted us to the hospital for observation. 

 

No one every once their child to be hospitalized, but there was some sense of relief that she would be in a safe place when she was having her spells.

 

After being pumped full of fluids, lovebug was doing so much better.  She started keeping her food down and having more wet diapers.  We got her tests results back the following morning and she tested positive for pertussis or whooping cough.  Basically, she is no longer contagious however it could take quite some time for her to get over this nasty, scary, infection.  We have to be sure that she doesn't start running a fever, keeps her food down and recovers from her coughing spells, the 100 day cough... I DO NOT LIKE YOU!!  Seriously friends, this is not something to mess with when you have wee ones.  It's exhausting, heartbreaking, scary, frightening, and I wish it would go away.  Our little baby girl is handling it like a champ though and she just keeps smiling that big beautiful smile of hers, hopefully she will mend from this quickly.