What Happened?

First of all, dear readers, I am so sorry to have left you in the lurch for so long. I'm sure many of you have been checking back often, looking for a new post - wondering, 'what has become of the goddess?'....'where is the goddess I need an update'. Well, readers, let me tell you that it is has not been easy for the goddess in the past two weeks.

Deep breath......

The goddess was.......wrong! Yes, please do not allow this earth shattering admission to throw any of you for a loop. I understand that many of you come to me for guidance, for laughs, for what have you, and to hear that the goddess was wrong, just might drive some of you over the edge. Let me explain.

Little Mookie has been coughing, which I noted in a previous post. Took him to the doctor, as a good mother would do, and the doctor listened to my explanation, listened to Mookie's chest, proclaimed it clear, then prescribed Xoponex, which the goddess refused to give her little Mookie, seeing as there were no real tests given.

Well, little Mookie started coughing one night and just could not stop, even with steam and everything else. Mookie went to the ER!!! He had to be nebulized and came back with albuterol in pump, diagnosed with an astham attack! What? My little Mookie, who has always been healthy and never shown signs of any type of respiratory distress, ASTHMA? How did the goddess fail??

Don't fear, there's more. Poor little Mookie was stable, but didn't find true relief, even with the albuterol. Back to the drs later that day. Well, well, the doctoer (not the same one from before) diagnosed the croup, the coughing from with irritated little Mookie's bronchial tubes, which in turn caused them to "seize up" so to speak, thus causing the tightness. What happened? The goddess had to stand by while her little Mookie was nebulized FOUR TIMES until his oxygen level was sufficiently high enough to be released home. We were in the drs office three hours and came home with a nebululizer, Pulimcort, Xoponex and Prednisolone. (Yes, now I'm a pharmicist, one of many hats that I wear). Yes, the goddess was against the drugs before, but with a competent diagnosis, a thorough examination by the doctor, a thorough explantion by the nurse practitioner and phone support by the drs, the goddess was willing to administer....well, let's just say we're lucky cocaine wasn't the end cure for Mookie for the goddess would have been trying to 'score'.

Now, a week after the crisis, Mookie has a wonderfully loose cough, mucous is plentiful and the tight continous cough is no more! Mookie is being weaned off his steriod regimin ans is still doing well. He is running, jumping and yelling with no ill effects....and no coughing.

So there's your fix, dear readers, rest assured the goddess is back and will have more tales to tell in the future.

Who are these children and why are they following me?

As you know from my title, I am a stay at home mom. I didn't always used to be a stay at home mom - I decided to do so when confronted with the high cost of day care that did not guarantee your child's safety and well being.

While I don't always guarantee my children's safety (when they're having a blast jumping up and down on the sofa and sitting on the edge of chairs, who am I to interfere with their fun) I can always guarantee my child's well being.....but they don't always guarantee mine.

Here are some cases in point:

My office. I have finally started to establish some "me space" in the house, now that the youngest is 18 months. I mean, children, really, your toys are everywhere in the house, even in the bathroom. Can't you give mommy some space to herself that is not occupied by a plastic, brightly colored toy? Apparantly not. Just like the bathroom, whenever I am the office, there are always emergencies, food needs and potty-training issues. Why? Why must you plague me when I only want a few seconds of peace and to read some email? Right now they are hovering outside of the door, saying "mommy what are you doing in there?" Gee, having some peace and quiet! Leave me be!

The bathroom. Regardless of the hours of potty training, getting to know the toilet better than I truly want to know, the intimacies of pee-pee and boo-boo and annoucements of exactly how much boo-boo is in the toilet, plus numerous readings about Joshua and his chamber pot and continuous perusal of "Everybody Poops", my little ones still seem to be a little bewildered about exactly what I do when I am in the bathroom. How do I know this? When I go into the bathroom and close the door, my oldest will knock and ask "Mommy, what you doing in there?" I used to answer, but why bother when they're just going to ask it again? How many times as a parent am I required to say, "Mommy is using the potty. Give me privacy." Why can't I say, "Look, I'm crapping. Leave me the alone!" I'll tell you why because when their father comes home, that'll be the first thing they tell him "Mommy crapped today." Then it will be repeated to my mother and any trusted adult they see. "Mommy crapped today." "Mommy crapped today." Ugh!

The kitchen
Yes, I am all for children helping you cook and participating.....What? No I'm not. When it's 3 pm and I'm rushing around trying to get things prepared for dinner, I really dont' have time to answer "What are you doing mommy?" Here's the answer I wish I could give, "You wanna eat? Then leave me alone!" (Funny how that 'leave me alone' is becoming a common theme.....)


All right, before you well meaning folks out there call division of youth and family services and trace me via my IP address, being at home isn't all that bad. Yes, the children will follow you from pillar to post (unless they're busy getting into something, which I bet they are RIGHT NOW because it's awful quiet out there) but it's such a blessing to watch them grow and do funny things with each other. You haven't lived until you hear an "argument" between a 3 year old girl and a 4 year old boy. Which is why I cherish every moment I'm at home with them!

Doctor, Doctor, give me the news.....

I've got a bad case of doubting you!


Took my oldest to the doctor today because a dry cough he'd been having on and off for the past oh, six/eight weeks. Now when I say on and off I mean the following - sometimes (3 out of 10 days) he'll wake up in the night coughing. And if he runs around outside and gets all sweaty and worked up (4 out of 10 times) he'll have the dry cough for about 40 min - hour afterward. Or, as it was today, the cough occurs for no reason at all.

I've tried tracking his diet, cleaning his room of dust using only a weak vinegar solution, eliminating foods, upping foods, keeping a vaporizer going at night, etc. etc. As you can probably tell, I am not the type of mom who runs to the doctor as every sniffle and snuffle. But, it was getting to me because it kept happening no matter what I did. So I made a drs appointment.

Prior to going to the doctor, I actually came upon a few websites that talked about exercise-induced asthma. Wow, I said to myself, this is exactly what Mr. Mookie (our baby name for him) has! And it doesn't happen all the time, and athletes get it too. What's the treatment? Well, in my reading, I found a few sites that suggest a natural remedy is to increase the intake of vitamin C. That's basically what I kenw when I stepped into the doctor's office.

It must have been a bad week for me, and I was totally unprepared (like I usually am for drs. visits, or maybe it was Friday Afternoon) but I walked out of the office with a nebulizer and a script for Xopenex. YES! I was so duh in that office, thinking that the dr. had my child's best interest at heart. Maybe so, but this is what I found out about Xopenex:

It can be part of long term treatment for severe asthma

Xopenex Solution should be used with extreme caution in CHILDREN younger than 6 years old; safety and effectiveness in these children have not been confirmed.

Side effects in children include: Diarrhea, fever, headache, hives, increased asthma symptoms, muscle pain, rash, runny nose, sore throat, swollen glands, viral infection, weakness



Additionally, a nebulizer should not be the first line of treatment for exercise induced asthma - an inhaled medication, taken 15 min before exercising/running around should be.

So, looks like Mr. Mookie will be on his vitamin C regemin (sp?) and I will be returning the nebulizer with a note. I suppose I'll be out of my 25 bucks, but that's the cost of NOT knowing what's going on before I go into the drs. office. What a shame that some drs. must use a sledgehammer to tap in a picture nail. These drugs are so powerful and the side effects seem worse than the minor cough that he's been having. Mind you now, he hasn't coughed at night for the past couple of days and only cough a lot where I noticed it at a party on Sunday, this was of course after he 1) refused to eat anything 2) ran around and hollered like a maniac 3)got all sweaty (as boys will do). He coughed for about 30 min and then it was over. Of course, I was all tense about it but what can you do?

I am certianly not going to put my child on such a severe course of treatment for an occasional cough. Certainly, if he were wheezing, couldn't really catch his breath or showed other, more severe symptoms, I'd be hooking that nebulizer up in a sec!!

We're going to try the Vit. c. therapy and see how it goes.