Just to keep life interesting

Not that life around here gets the chance to be boring very often.

We've had a busy few days. Friday was the day for the ROSY Christmas Lunch. Last year's Christmas Lunch was my introduction to the ROSY support group. It doesn't feel like a year. Mog was out of school so we all went, carefully angling Mog so her coughs wouldn't land on the more vulnerable children there. The committee had arranged presents for all of us, bath salts and other smellies for the Mums and nurses, plastic raincovers for the children. And then the two Dads who turned up were presented with the same frilly bath salts plus a hastily organised bag of peanuts from the table of nibbles. A delicious meal, and again we managed to baffle the committee members by being cheerful and generally having fun, always useful.

Yesterday Mog had a visit planned to her extended family. We rearranged so her family came here instead, so three generations of the Mog clan came and had fun as Little Fish alternately cried for me and spilt glitter over the floor. Fun times.

And then life got funner. Mog got coughier and coughier, her stridor turned into a train whistle, her breaths got faster and faster and her saline wasn't doing anything to settle it down. So we called the Out of Hours Doctors, and then we were visited by the men in green. Mog was pleased to see them and smiled on cue as they slapped a stethoscope across her chest. Little Fish was even more pleased to see them, especially when she realised we were going to take a ride in the "Gammybus" as she Christened it.

One panting wheezing stridoring struggling Mog still with the strength to resist the salbutamol nebs and getting increasingly cross as well as increasingly tired. One Little Fish ecstatic over the sirens and flashing light and "gammybus go wheeeeeeeeee".

Arrive at hospital where a team of doctors are waiting with all kinds of patent airways and devious appliances; it is with an air of disappointment that they decide these won't be needed. One chest x-ray which shows she doesn't have a chest infection at all, one shot of Dexamethasone and she started to settle. At which point Croup became the official diagnosis, the world relaxed, and we got to sit on the hospital trolley being observed for 3 hours 55 minutes before being discharged home.

Mog by this point was demonstrating that she was perfectly able to make her feelings known to the world, screaming at the universe in fury at being on the trolley. Little Fish is alternating lying on my leg pressing her head into my bladder and sucking her sleeve with sitting upright and demanding "Wot you doin'?" to every nurse who walks past our bay. This is fine when they are throwing gloves in the bin or grabbing a drink of water. Slightly impolite but still acceptable when they are drawing up meds for another patient. Downright intrusive when they are catheterising the old lady next door on one side or bagging the dead man on the other. Privacy is underrated. I am sitting on the trolley (doctor's request - Mog breathes better when she's sitting upright and she can't sit upright unaided especially on a 2 foot wide trolley with no pillows and a concrete mattress). Mog is on one leg, screeching. Little Fish on the other leg being embarrasing. It was a long few hours.

Little Fish is a caring little girl though. With every screech "Ok Mog Mummy got you, you be bit better in a minute." And to every passing medic "Mog bit poorly. Got cough and dridor."Very sweet.

Finally released - she doesn't need oxygen, she doesn't need IVs and we can do the rest at home. We have one emergency dose of the Dexamethasone should she need it again, and we are off.

Home and both girls asleep by midnight. Now it's 11AM and Mog has just been woken by someone kindly dropping off a Christmas Card after church. Little Fish is still asleep, and whilst half of me is enjoying the peace the other half is thinking I really should wake her up if I'm going to stand any chance of getting her back to sleep tonight.

So if anyone has any explanation for masses of secretions in the lungs without an infection, preferably something we can treat fairly easily, I'd be grateful. Meanwhile we're off to Mum and Dad's for lunch in a while, so I probably ought to go and make Little Fish decent.

Tia