me and traveling don't play well together.

so, i never blogged about the curve ball thrown in my travels to seattle. well, here we go....

we get to seattle with no problem and find our luggage and find nena. go to lunch, make a run to target, then hit the road for a 3 hour drive to her house. half-way there, i look back to see ash sleeping and emma trying to sleep but looking rather uncomfortable in her own skin. so i just watched her for a while to see what was irking her so much. that's when i realized that she was breathing funny. her breathing looked rather robotic and her little body looked like someone was doing CPR on her the way her chest was rising and falling.

so we went straight to urgent care.

we were taken right back, she was evaluated and by this time had a very audible wheezing accompanying her labored breathing. it was scary. but her oxygen saturation was 95%. she had such a look of fear in her eyes and face and kept whining and complaining that her throat hurt. within minutes they were doing a breathing treatment on her. what a nightmare. 2 year olds and breathing treatments don't like each other too well. it was 15 minutes long. 15 minutes of me holding her as tight as i could while she kicked and screamed and cried and worked herself up into a fit like none i'd ever seen before. after that she was reevaluated and it was decided that she needed a chest x-ray. another fit without cooperation landed her in a papoose to get her still enough for the x-ray. then back to the room to find out minutes later that my baby girl has pneumonia.

PNEUMONIA!

how in the world did she get pneumonia? mind you, she had no other symptoms. no coughing, no fever, no crankiness, nothing. so we went forward with a megadose antibiotic shot and a steriod shot. poor thing was put through the ringer. and we were sent home (to nena's) on the promise that we'd return for a recheck the next day.

next day. no wheezing. labored breathing on exertion. oxygen saturation 93%. here we go again. another breathing treatment with even more kicking and screaming and crying. another antibiotic shot. and sent home with an antiobiotic prescription and a strict order to rest. HA!

i laughed audibly at that order. i said, "yeah, that's going to be next to impossible with 5 other kids running amuck in the same house." with a semi-stern reply he said "pneumonia is very serious and she needs to use every ounce of energy she has to heal her little body. staying still and keeping quiet....just resting." then he gave me some jargon about hospitalization, etc. so i snarked back and said "if she needs to be quiet and rest then she needs to be in the hospital. 'cause quiet and rest ain't gonna happen in a houseful of kids." we both had a little chuckle and parted ways.

then comes the fun part. administering "yucky" antibiotics is NOT fun. oh, and just when you thought it couldn't get any worse we add in 4 nights in a row of her puking all night long. i mean, ALL night long. like every 10 minutes. sun comes up, she's fine. sun goes down, she's puking. niiiiiiiice.

and ya know what. in chicago during our layover i had an overwhelming sense that i shouldn't get on that plane to seattle. something in my gut just said don't do it. after that rigamaroo.....i should've listened. there's something to say for gut instinct don't ya think?

but nonetheless, we were there and i tried to make the best of it. nena, ryan and the kids were good troopers putting up with us for a week. THANKS guys!