What did you do for Labor Day?

My holiday weekend concluded with a trip to the ER with L.  She has had crazy allergies for the past couple of weeks and was particularly miserable on Monday.  A couple of times during the day she mentioned that she couldn't breath, but it was usually followed by, "Ugh!  I'm going to die!"  So I was assuming that she was being dramatic and was just congested from her allergies.

Q had been out of town for the week at a conference, so we decided to celebrate the holiday with some friends.  One of our friends at the BBQ was a pediatric doctor, so I asked her what I should be looking for if L really started having problems breathing.  She offered to listen to her, and then told me that she recommended taking her to the ER that night.  WHAT?!  Besides being lethargic (which I attributed to the allergy medicine we'd just switched her to), she was not in any noticeable distress.

But, wanting to be on the safe side, I had a friend come and stay with the boys while I took her to the hospital.  I was worried about it keeping us out late since her 1st day of school was in the morning, but I needn't have been concerned.  Once they saw her oxygen levels they immediately had her in a bed and soon transferred her to a room where she stayed for 3 days.

She has not been extremely uncomfortable (besides when they were trying very unsuccessfully to get an IV in numerous times), and actually had a party at the hospital -- meals in bed, lots of friendly nurses, doctors, and child life specialists who brought her movies, books, games, toys, etc.  She even spent one night watching movies continuously until 6am with the nurses while I was home with the boys.

In fact, she saw her hospital stay as 3 days of mommy-daughter dates.  We had a lot of fun playing games, chatting, and just being together without other siblings needing my attention.  I think we both liked that a lot.

They are labeling her as having "Reactive Airways" which is essentially asthma.  She had an extreme reaction to something unidentified, and since she has never had any kind of respiratory issues and started out with such an intense case, it will be interesting to see what the future holds.  For a while it will definitely be filled with inhalers, medicine, and encountering situations (pets, running, season changes, etc) that may or may not trigger an attack.  Hopefully we will get some insights once we are able to get in with the allergist and pulmonologist.

With Q gone, I was very grateful for our ward and all of their willingness to take the boys and lose sleep to be at our house at night so that I could be with L at the hospital.  We are lucky to have so many wonderful people as contacts and friends.

Q is back now and we are hoping L will finally have her 1st day of school tomorrow.  It was canceled for the hurricane power outages and then she's missed most of her 1st week so she is excited and nervous.

 Hopefully your Labor Day was less exciting than mine was!

L giving me her best smile.