The germ count

As of right now, we are healthy.  That’s very nice. The girls are well—or as well as Braska can be with what is apparently allergies at this time of year, so still snot persists—and they are nearing their “normal” demeanors again. 

Right at the moment I can’t remember what I’ve updated about on here and what I haven’t and I have very limited time to throw some info up here, so I won’t go hunt it down. If this is a repeat, please pardon me.

Braska is due for tubes in her ears. We learned this at the end of February and were not at all surprised.  Though she made it her first three years of life with not a single ear infection, she had at least 4 in the first 3 months of school, so tubes are in order.  The ENT recommended that we get a sleep study first to see if we would just do tonsils, adenoids, and tubes all in one anesthesia trip. Sounds good to me. The sleep study was at the end of March. (Still no results…grrr. That’s another story. I’m going to be making another in a long string of calls this morning.)

To my chagrin, the ENT either has way too many patients or way too little time scheduled for OR procedures, because suddenly, when we wanted to schedule for a surgery date, they gave us June 2.  Not acceptable.  So we began to check out some options, including restarting with another ENT and still getting the whole process done in less time. But in the nick of time, I was told that there was a cancellation and we could have the slot, the first week of May.  I took it, and we resigned to the fact that we’d have to wait til then for the procedure.

Due to our string of ear infections, strep, hand/foot/mouth disease, and random other fun germies, our pediatrician recommended this week that we keep Braska out of school until her surgery, just to be SURE that we don’t have to postpone due to another little illness.  If we have to reschedule, it would probably be December before we get in, by my calculations.

Therefore, this week I’ve been talking to lots of people at her school, the district coordinator, therapists, etc.  We’re trying to work out a way for her to go to school for therapy only and in environments that we can control as far as exposure/cleanliness.  So I would take her up for therapy services at regular times for the next few weeks.  At this point, we have speech on the calendar, but I’m waiting on the rest.  OT/feeding is my primary concern, since Braska’s been making progress with Sue, so it’s the one I’ll work the hardest for. (Excuse me…for which I’ll work the hardest.   Good grammar can be so formal.)

We’re hanging out at home in the meantime.  The girls are playing fairly well, though they sure do get on each others nerves lately, and mine, and Belle’s, and vice versa in all cases…close quarters we have here, and when we’re all trying to accomplish something different on our personal agendas, it gets heated.  We’ve made a few trips to the library, with limited handling of books.  Braska has asked almost daily to “go school today?” and “fun at Jack’s house!” (She actually says it like that…there’s nothing but fun at Jack’s house apparently!)

For now we’ll take it easy, enjoy the nice weather, though we can’t really use the beloved attic fan like we would prefer since Miss Snotty only gets worse with all the crazy high pollen lately.  We’ve had her on Claritin which didn’t seem to do anything at all.  We now have her on Zyrtec, but it appears to make her really crazy inside and she acts out strangely.  So I’m not really sure we’ll continue.  She hasn’t had it last night or today, so we’ll see how she does.

That’s where we are. Not all that bad, not all that fun. But I’ll take it over antibiotics and coughing and fevers and whining (more than usual, on Kinlee’s part) any day.

I now return you to your regularly scheduled day. Thanks for tuning in.