Oblivion

As I mentioned in my past posts, Emilia has had lots of colds since she started day care. Around the middle of December, however, her "daycare cold" was no longer just a simple cold when she started to wheeze. Her doctor prescribed a puffer (blue one) which we used for about 10 days until she got over the cold. Since then, she has had mid cold symptoms: sniffling, runny nose, and little bit of coughing. Last Thursday, I noticed her wheezing again and gave her 2 puffs before bedtime. The next morning, she looked okay so we just sent her to the daycare without her inhaler. When I went to pick her up in the afternoon though, her breathing had gotten so much worse that I felt like she was going to be out of breath even if she moved just a little bit. I gave her 2 puffs at home, which seemed to help her only for 1 hour.

We rushed to the Children's After Hour Clinic, and the doctor there prescribed another kind of puffer (orange one) in addition to the blue one. Also he put her on prednisolone for 3 days. We thought everything would settle down because we were now armed with 2 different puffers and liquid medicine. However, on Saturday afternoon, her wheezing didn't get better. I gave her 2 puffs of the blue inhaler almost every hour for 3 hours and finally we took her to the emergency of Hamilton Children's Hospital. The doctor there explained us that she didn't think Emilia had asthma but her prematurity didn't help her in the already bad cold/flu season at the daycare. For one, she has chronic lung disease, something I had put behind us and forgotten about since she got off home oxygen last year.  In fact, I didn't hear those three words since February last year. Oh, how much I dreaded seeing "CLD" written in Emilia's medical files in the NICU.

How could we forget how vulnerable my little baby is, even though she looks so healthy and strong. We were fooling ourselves because she seemd to be thriving. I became lax with handwashing - not mine, but hers. I always scrub my hands when I come home but I wasn't diligent with HER handwashing. It was a reality check for us...

The good thing is she is much better now. We got her checked by her doctor today. He listened to her chest and said he didn't hear wheezing. He does not think it's asthma either. He thinks she didn't have enough time to recover from the first cold before she got the second one, which was basically what the doctor at HCH told us on Saturday.