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Bryan bought some new dish towels recently. He washed the new ones and tossed the old ones. The only problem was that we couldn't find the new towels after they were washed. We looked everywhere we could think of. Today I was in our laundry room/pantry loading the washing machine. I turned around and made a discovery. Then I took a picture and sent it to Bryan with a two word message: "Found them."
Of course. Why didn't we think to look there?
Sophie is still having trouble breathing at night (at least she's still coughing), but during the day she's much better. She was well enough to go to swimming tonight. Phoebe had a rehearsal at the same time and in the same building. We dropped Phoebe off at the theatre door and drove around the building to park near the pool with the plan to meet Phoebe inside. That's how we discovered that the middle school lowers gates to block off the athletic side of the building (that gets used by the community in the evenings) from the rest of the school.
Sophie and Phoebe may have pretended they were both in jail for a moment.
Sophie finished her second round of antibiotics over a week ago. She seemed to be getting better. Then yesterday during dinner she started coughing again. It continued through the evening until she went to sleep. She woke us up around one in the morning because she was coughing and having trouble breathing and couldn't sleep. I gave her cough medicine and sent her back to bed. She came in again two hours later, this time wheezing and panicked that she couldn't breathe.
That's what prompted us to spend a few hours in the ER in the early hours of the morning. It was dark when we arrived. They took her back right away and put her in a room. A doctor came to look at her, they ordered a chest x-ray, then swabbed her for strep throat, RSV, the flu, and COVID. She said they would likely give her an inhaler to help her breathe.
Then we waited.
They did the x-ray.
And we waited.
And watched the Disney Channel.
And waited.
And waited.
The doctor finally came back and said she had tested negative for strep and the x-ray looked clear. I thought they would offer a breathing treatment. But they didn't. Other than running tests, they didn't do anything. They didn't treat her at all. In fact, they decided to send her home before any of the other tests were done, they would call with the results.
I was surprised and frustrated that they weren't going to help her at all. They said since the other possibilities were all viruses nothing could be done. I asked about the inhaler and was told that they didn't want to give her an inhaler because that would show up on her medical record. That might cause a doctor in the future to think she has asthma and misdiagnose her or misread her symptoms. I told the doctor that some of my other children had been given inhalers for isolated illnesses and hadn't had the problem she described. She was apologetic and I discovered that she had been overridden by her supervising doctor who had only seen Sophie for about a minute.
The sun was up when we drove home. She and I were both sad and frustrated at the lack of help.
They never called back with any test results.
We'll see how tonight goes.
It was a warm 62 degrees this afternoon. We walked home from the bus stop, then played in the backyard for almost an hour. At one point Topher expressed his joy about being outside by singing out "Ha-lay-yu-lah!"
Sophie got a few pictures of his happiness.
Six out of seven members of our family went to a fun birthday party at a chocolate shop tonight. The owner couldn't be certain that the activity was peanut free, so Peter spent the evening at a friend's house. The party was for Topher's friend, so Peter was not attending. The other kids enjoyed painting chocolate molds, watching those molds get filled with chocolate, running Oreos and graham crackers through an enrober to cover them in chocolate, and dipping marshmallows and pretzels and fruit into a chocolate fountain. Their stomachs were ready to burst by the time we left.
They were all pleased with how their chocolate bars turned out.
The good news is that Sophie is finally on the mend. She still has a cough and a stuffy nose, but they're much better than they were. Phoebe also appears to be improving. She came home early on Wednesday because her sinuses were so angry and active, but today she was much less drippy. I'm exhausted and dragging with a dry cough, but I seem to have had the lightest case so far. Cooper only has a cough left. Bryan is dragging and may be getting sick, but has still been able to function. Peter is so busy I'm assuming he's not home enough to catch anything.
Unfortunately Topher missed school on Monday because of a fever. He came home early today because of a headache and a stomachache. I'm not even sure if he has the same thing the rest of us got or if a new strain of something has been introduced into the household.
That said, I'm cautiously optimistic that we may be heading toward better health.
Cooper is taking photography this semester and has already learned some fun things. Among the not-so-fun things I learned today: he needed to have taken 50 pictures on black and white film by tomorrow. Did we have black and white film for his camera? No, no we did not. Did his camera have a working battery? Also no.
Something else I learned: the nearest photography supply store store is about 30 minutes from my house and had everything we were missing. Now he just needs to take the pictures.
