Sick

Our whole family is a sniffling, coughing, sneezing, wheezing, snotty mess. Who wants to come visit?!

Adam has been battling this cold/sinus infection/whatnot the longest, I think. Well over a week. Yesterday he said that he was feeling better, so I hope he's on the mend.

Alyssa has been sniffling, coughing, etc for several days now, but its just been the last 24 hours or so that she's really started complaining about not feeling well. Of course that could be in part to several days of not napping and not sleeping through the night which makes her a little more "emotional" that usual.

Today is the first day that I've felt really crummy. The kids have been getting up multiple times at night, which I think is catching up to me. Last night they were up about 20 minute apart - just enough time for me to finally settle down and fall asleep from getting up with Joel and *tap, tap, tap* comes Alyssa. I'm hoping that some Airborne and chilling at home will make me feel better quickly.

And now we get to my "problem" child. Although he's not really the problem. Wednesday morning I noticed some "crud" in Joel's ear, but I couldn't tell if it was crud that had come out or crud that had drained out of his nose/mouth during the night and dried in his ear. After his afternoon nap, it was pretty evident that it was coming out of his ear, which is a surefire symptom of an ear infection. Of course ... at 4PM the day before Thanksgiving. I called Dr. K's office to see if they would call in an Rx for him or if we should just take him to the after hours clinic that evening. The nurse called back with instructions to start ear drops and then bring him in on Friday if he seemed worse/didn't get better and they would get him on some oral meds. He was obviously not getting any better, so yesterday I called Dr K's office and got the answering service - they informed me that the office was closed. Great. But they have a children's urgent care within the same office during "off" hours that was supposed to be open from 12pm - 10pm yesterday. No problem. So off Joel and I went to urgent care #1. Their lighted sign said open, the sign on the door listing hours said that they should be open, but their locked door made me think otherwise. So back in the car to head to urgent care #2, which was actually a "quick care" clinic inside the grocery store. There I was informed that even though we arrived an hour and a half BEFORE they were supposed to close, they had too much paperwork to catch up on from patients earlier in the day, so they were refusing to see any more patients. Beautiful. So finally on to urgent care #3. Third time was a charm. We had to wait forever (it seemed) in the waiting room, but within 5 minutes of the doctor coming in she declared that Joel had a sinus infection, bronchitis, and a possible ruptured ear drum from an ear infection - the tube is no longer in place in that ear, so either the hole from the tube hadn't healed over yet or the ear drum ruptured. My poor baby. This whole process took about 3 hours.

Black Friday shopping was a cake walk compared to trying to get medical attention the day after Thanksgiving.