Memorable Valentine's Day

So, has my Valentine's Day been filled with roses, chocolates, jewelry, a mushy card, and what would be even better, a morning of sleeping in? Eh, not so much.

Rather, after getting just over four cumulative, but not consecutive, hours of sleep (after about five the night before), I spent some time speaking with an on-call dr. first thing in the morning. That led to Adriana and I spending the morning at Utah Valley Regional Medical Center doing a lot of waiting (despite the fact that our dr. had faxed over an order already), completing a test for RSV (which, btw, is very nasty, and involves a tube being shoved down both nostrils and painfully sucking a bunch of even more nasty stuff up to be tested), doing a nebulizer treatment (machine "mists" medicine to you to breathe in), and did I mention a whole lot of waiting?

I consider myself a veteran croup parent after all of Adriana's many episodes of croup we've dealt with over the years, so when she had a fever yesterday and a nasty cough I wasn't too worried. I didn't want to make a trip to the dr.'s office unless it was really necessary because I didn't have a car (it was "in the shop" the whole day) and I didn't think Adriana was sick enough to bother with arranging for a ride for Adriana, Miriam and myself and then have the dr. say she had a virus and to keep doing what I was doing. Most cases of croup you just have to wait it out, use a humidifier, and take your child outside in the cold air if he/she is struggling to breathe. This sickness was different starting last night, though. By the early morning hours Adriana was really struggling to breathe, and her breath was extremely strident on both inhalations and exhalations. I could here her trying to breathe even when I was in a different room. I couldn't get her fever to break, and her coloring was just.....off. I don't know how else to describe it. She was extremely listless, wouldn't eat or drink anything (you know your child is sick if she turns down ice cream, popsicles, or any kind of juice she wants), and she didn't even care if she had her beloved purple blanket, which is her main security item when she's sick, tired, or afraid.

I won't go in to every nitty gritty detail of our hospital stay or the rest of our day, but long story short we still don't know if she has RSV (her test sample "accidentally" got sent to the Central Lab, wherever that is, so they don't know when we'll have the results), and we are now the proud owners of our very own, very expensive nebulizer machine. The dr. said it didn't really matter if Adriana officially had RSV because the treatment would be the same, and she's going to need so many treatments he wanted us to have our own machine here at home so we could give her medicine anytime she needed it. I must admit that with the number of breathing-related illnesses we have had, it is comforting to know that we have our own nebulizer. I don't even have to wake her up to give her her medicine. If I hear that her breathing is getting labored, I can bring the machine in to her room and just hold the nozzle up near her nose and mouth so she can breathe in the medicine.

I would still like to know exactly what Adriana has, mostly so I can call the parents of the children from her preschool (I assume you're reading this, Octavia? If not, I'll probably be calling you Monday morning depending on how Adriana's doing.) and let them know what their child was exposed to. I'll also be doing a lot of disinfecting and handwashing. As for our trip to California that's planned for this Wednesday..... guess we'll have to see.

I'm really glad Kendall and I were able to go on our date last night. Of course, if I'd known how sick Adriana was I never would have left and had Mom come over to babysit. I'm going to feel really bad if Mom comes down with anything. Even so, Kendall and I had a great time going to PF Chang's for dinner, stopping by a bookstore (I know, we're both nerds that we find that fun), and then going to our stake's Valentine's dance that brought back a lot of memories from the high school stake dances we used to go to. Biggest differences were that no one forced us to "snowball" our dance partners (I always hated that), and I didn't have any stupid rules about Kendall only being able to dance with me for two (or was it three?) slow songs. Yeah, I had a lot of dumb rules when we were in high school because I was so worried about the dreaded "steady dating" when we were so young. We can look back on all that and laugh now, but I'm surprised Kendall put up with me. :)

Happy Valentine's Day!