Well, it's been an eventful couple of days. Katiebug started feeling rough Friday morning, coughing and wheezing and just feeling bad. We went to the doctor and found out her lungs were pretty inflamed, but no sign of an infection like pneumonia or bronchitis. We got a prescription for prednisolone (like the steroids she had been on in the hospital) and instructions to have a breathing treatment every 4 hours. Overnight she got quite a bit worse, running a fever and coughing so hard she started throwing up. Then she stopped eating. Between 2 o'clock this morning and around 1 this afternoon all we could get down was about an ounce of Pedialyte. We tried to sleep in a chair to keep her upright, but neither of us really slept for most of the night. After talking to her pediatrician we decided to head to Children's Hospital this morning.

We had a couple of breathing treatments, a big dose of prednisolone, a cocktail of tylenol and something to settle her tummy, some blood tests and a chest x-ray. The chest x-ray looked fine, thank God! No pneumonia or bronchitis. The blood work was fine too and she was (surprisingly) not dehydrated. So, they figure it is a viral infection that has just caused her to have a bad cough. She is coughing so hard to get that stuff up that it's causing her to throw up. The fever made her feel too yucky to eat, so there we are. The original prescriptions were right on the money and she seems to be feeling better so far. Her fever has stayed down since she got the tylenol at the hospital. (I was giving her too small a dose at home - too much caution, I suppose.) She is fussy, but she is worn out - she's had a rough day of poking and prodding, plus 2 days of shots last week and very little sleep. The doctor at the hospital believes that with the medicine and the breathing treatments, she should feel MUCH better by tomorrow morning. He also told us to get whatever fluids in her that we could. Before we left the hospital, she took about an ounce and a half of formula and after we got home she took 3 ounces. We tried some Powerade (recommended by the doc) but she still hasn't decided if she likes it.

Basically, this is just something we may have to deal with. They are hesitant to diagnose her with asthma because she is so young. They call it RAD - restrictive airway disease, instead, but it seems to mean pretty much the same thing. Because of being born so early, her lungs are just weaker than they would be otherwise and a simple cold can cause problems like this. BUT, she will hopefully grow out of this as her lungs and the rest of her gets stronger and stronger. Many of the nurses were surprised and pleased that this was her first visit back to the hospital with all the challenges that she started out with. By the way, East Tennessee Children's Hospital is absolutely wonderful and we are so thankful for every sweet person there.

Please keep her in your prayers as she recovers. (and as we do too! What a couple of days - she's keeping us on our toes.)

We're always taking pictures, you know, so we had to share. The first one is a worn out baby girl in a too-large hospital gown, waiting, waiting, waiting. After they told us we could go home, we celebrated with Starbucks that our friends brought us. Daddy, of course, couldn't resist letting Katie have a taste. I threatened him that if she threw up on the way home I would be holding him personally responsible! (She didn't!) Katie actually wanting a drink was our first indication that she was feeling better - she's like us, she doesn't lose her appetite very easily. The last picture is after we got home and she had a small bottle. She was fussing, but then we started playing with her peek-a-boo puppy and she thought it was pretty funny.

Hopefully she will have a more restful night tonight and, like the doctor said, start feeling a whole lot better in the morning.