A day I'd rather forget...

WARNING: long drawn out dramatic blog post. Sorry, wish I could cut it short, but there was too much drama this week that I couldn't!

I don't even know where to start about this week. Monday was my birthday and it was so wonderful. My kids at school were great and the boys were extra good. Isn't that so sad that my mood and my day is all based on the behavior of all the children in my life? Sad, but true.

Wednesday was the day from hell and I'm not joking at all. We had an all day field trip and I mean all day. We went to Camp Carter with 100 5th graders to do outdoor learning. Sounds fun, right? Not when it's 24 degrees outside with a wind chill of about 12 in the morning. We didn't get back to school until 6:00 p.m. and I was beyond exhausted after our 2 hour hike and just being around that chaos for the entire day in the bitter cold. I told myself on the bus ride home, I was going to take a shower and head straight for bed.

Justin picked up the boys from school and had band practice at church so I went to pick them up from church. My mission was to get them in bed as soon as possible so I could follow right behind them. When I first saw Campbell he was coughing and sounded just awful. He had coughed throughout the night on Tuesday night but was really wheezing. Poor thing sounded like he smoked a pack of cigarettes. I thought about taking him to Carenow on the way home but knew that Justin would be right behind me so decided to wait until he got home. Justin saw how worn out I looked and volunteered to take him to the doctor. I ALWAYS am the one to take them, but Wednesday I was so exhausted that I didn't argue.

Fifteen minutes later, Justin calls and says very calmly, "Hey we're going to take Campbell to Cook's by ambulance because he's not getting enough oxygen." Good thing he was calm because I was SO not. We decided for me to drive to the hospital so we'd have a way home. By now, Nolan is in bed. I can't get a hold of my mom, dad, neighbor...let's just say that it wasn't one of my finer moments. Words were being said that I wasn't so proud of. Finally, I got hold of my neighbor and he ran over (thank goodness for them) and I beat the ambulance to the hospital. I had absolutely NO business driving myself but really had no choice. I SO do not have grace under fire. I called my sister, Tonya, to track down my mom but was so upset she could hardly understand me. Somehow she got a hold of them (they never answer their phone...it drives me crazy) and my dad ended up beating me to the hospital and my mom came 5 minutes later. So we're all at the hospital waiting for the ambulance to get there.

At Carenow, Campbell had really labored breathing and was at 94% oxygen. They like it to be at 98-99% and get really worried at 92%. They gave him a breathing treatment and oxygen on the ambulance ride and by the time he was at the hospital, he was breathing anywhere from 96-99% oxygen on his own. We spent the next 4-5 hours giving him breathing treatments, x-rays, and monitoring his oxygen. They diagnosed it as bronco-spasm wheezing. We asked the doctor what is all this and she said that basically it looks like he's going to have asthma. They don't like to diagnose children before the age of 2 with it though because Nolan was the same way (never quite this bad though) and now has outgrown it and hasn't had a breathing treatment for almost 2 years. So at 1 a.m they released us.

The worst part was just knowing that he was in an ambulance and that I wasn't there with him. Don't you know that I'm going to every doctor appt for the rest of his life. He's going to be so embarrassed when he's 30 and married and I'm still out in the waiting room.

He had another labored breathing episode on Thursday so we took him in to our pediatrician. I've learned it's better to overreact with him. I just showed up during her lunch hour and she saw us. So now we're on a slew of meds and doing breathing treatments every 2-4 hours around the clock. It's always fun wrestling an alligator 6-8 times a day...but hey, it's helping him so we'll keep doing it.

Thanks for everyone's prayers and concern. What a scare!