Worried About Gracie

Gracie just turned 4. She has had pnuemonia 5 times since she was born. She has never gotten a cold and recovered from it without meds. She has had to go to the pediatrician everytime she has gotten a virus because it morphs into some sort of bronchitus, infection or pnuemonia. She had ear tubes placed at 10 months and was hospitalized for 8 days at 15 months with severe pneumonia. She is just now recovering from her last bought of pneumonia and coughed so severely that she ruptured the tiny blood vessels in her eyes! The docs have now,(finally), taken notice of her frequent illness and have discovered that everytime she has been sick it has involved her right lung in the lower and middle lobes. They are in the process of referring her to a pulmonologist. In a sense, I am grateful and relieved to finally,(possibly, hopefully) have some answers, but in a sense I am also scared. I am scared to have an answer and also scared to not have an answer. I am also beginning to realize that I have become super aware of people that seem sick around me. If I am out and someone sneezes or coughs or worse I hear a stuffy nose or see a kid with green yucky stuff coming from theirs.....I totally will go the other way. I will do anything to avoid Grace being exposed to a virus. The first time I became aware of my paranoia was at church one morning and one of Grace's friends came and sat with us...as she does frequently. Well a few minutes into the service her little friend coughed. It was not just a little cough but one of those coughs that sound like they have a flood of mucus in their lungs trying to come out. I sat there mortified as she and Grace were whispering and touching the same things!! Inside I wanted to snatch Gracie up and run to the bathroom and scrub her until she was surely germ free. Of course I didn't, mostly because by then the damage was done. A week later the virus had a hold of both Grace and Jessica. As expected Jessica got over it in about 4 days, and in about 4 days I was taking Grace to the doctors.

I worry that people and doctors too will think I am just being overprotective and silly. Sometimes I have to wonder myself. But everytime I have taken her in sure enough she is into bronchitus and of course the next step would be another pnuemonia. The coughing is the worst. Poor little thing is up all night long with me beside her, all propped up, (doesn't seem to help so I don't know why we bother). She trys to eat and is coughing so much she just cries and gives up. She does sleep after exhaustion sets in, although she moans while she is sleeping and her body heaves as it tries to suppress the coughing. She eventually wakes and has an even more terrible coughing spasm than before she fell asleep. I have tried everything...even the vicks on the feet with socks wives tale, didn't work. She gets breathing treatments, I run the humidifyer...still no relief for her. As a parent it breaks my heart.

So thankfully I finally have someones attention and maybe a pulmonologist can help. I just can't shake this gut feeling I have that there is some underlying thing going on that is the reason for all of this illness. She is supposed to start pre-school in the fall and I don't see how she possibly will fair being exposed to even more viruses than she is now. We get them from church, dance class and playdates, along with whatever her two older sisters bring home from school. But the thought of her being in close proximity with 20 other 4 year olds that are not washing hands and coughing all over the place has me mortified!! We are lucky to go two months without having to have her down with another virus and back on antibiotics!! She misses dance class and church and playdates.....what will we do if she misses a week of school at a time!! How will it effect her schooling and her ability to fit in at school?!

My two older kids were never sick like this. If they got a bug it worked its course and then they bounced back. We just finished Grace's double round of antibiotics last night...so my waiting begins now for the next bug to attack. Hopefully it won't hit her before she can get in to see the pulmonologist. I think it would be easier to examine her if she was healthy at the time. Her doctors still have not called me with the referral! I called the office and left a message on Friday last week as it had been a week since I was told to expect the referral. It is tough not knowing what is going on.