Cooties!

So turns out things weren't exactly back to "normal". Dave definitely caught a cold and yesterday morning started coughing pretty bad. It got worse throughout the day and last night neither of us slept very well because his cough sounds SO awful.  I was on high alert. At one point he knocked something over and I thought it was his water, I went from mostly asleep to on my feet in half a second.  Thankfully it wasn't anything important and I could lay back down.

The big problem with him coughing is that he can't. Yeah... he can't. Think about when you get sick and how much your abs hurt when you have been coughing a ton, he doesn't have the ab muscles to help his body cough things out.  We've figured out a way (yay google) to assist him where I basically give him resistance on his stomach, below the rib cage, so his diaphragm has something to press against when he tries to cough.  It seems to work fairly well but it's a bit of a production and it wears him out. 

Normally a cold like this wouldn't be a big deal but in his case it could go from bad to BAD very quickly. We're mostly concerned about pneumonia. He's taking some meds and sucking on cough drops like candy and I got a vaporizer to help keep things loose. He's been sleeping a lot which is good since he didn't sleep much during the night. It's stressful on both of us.A hospice nurse is making an unscheduled visit tomorrow just to check on him which is good.

Owen is still sick, he missed pretty much all of last week of school. I sent him back on Thursday only to get a call around 1:15 from the school nurse saying he has a fever and please come get him.  He's been laid up all week/weekend and has been putting himself to bed at 8.  That's totally unheard of. I'm hoping he's well enough to go to school in the morning but part of me is so hesitant because his immune system is low and I don't want him catching MORE cooties from the other sickies at school.  If he stays home tomorrow I think I should take him to the Dr although I hate to because they'll probably just say he's got a virus and send him back home. 

It's been a rough week for me because I have been feeling a little under the weather myself although thankfully not as bad as the boys.  Not only am I doing the normal stuff taking care of David but now Owen needs to be taken care of AND I don't have my helper around because he's sick in bed. I don't feel like I can afford to have a cranky day. We're kind of on lockdown around here, no germs in or out if we can help it. 

Oh yeah, and David has treatment on wednesday. We're not sure what's going to happen if he still has this cough. We'll have to evaluate the risks/reward when it gets closer. Hopefully he's on the upswing and this will all be a distant memory soon enough.

Wash your hands and don't touch your faces!