Not to sound like a broken record here, but man, we just survived yet another round of colds. This last one was nasty. Just when you thought you finally kicked the bloody thing, it returned with a vengeance. We all have remnants of coughs and runny noses, although Edward has a fresh cold to contend with, and it doesn't help that we are in the midst of another cold snap.
And then there was last night. Keith has a cough. It sounded tight in his chest, and Sunday morning, he stopped wanting to eat and developed a fever. Yesterday morning, when he was outside with Nana - one of his favourite activities - he lay down in a snowbank and sobbed for me. Then, he refused his dessert last night after eating no dinner. When we put him to bed, his fever was all but gone, but his respiration rate was fast and shallow. As a lifelong asthmatic, I am painfully aware of the signs of respiratory distress. He wasn't wheezing, but he was "breath talking", which is my unscientific term for talking only while exhaling. Healthy people breath and talk independently. After 2 hours of rest last night, he was no better. So Edward and I made the discouraging decision to take him out of his warm bed and into the frigid cold to sit in a germ infested hospital where he would be guaranteed to get no sleep. We know the drill, and it's always hard to weigh your child's best interest in those situations. However, we also you don't mess around with breathing problems. And after Keith's hospitalization in 2012 when he was laid low by an unknown virus, I am particularly reluctant to take a "wait and see" approach to his breathing problems. So, he and Edward headed off at around 10:30pm.
They went to the closest hospital and they were seen relatively quickly after the ER doctor, herself a mother of four, took pity on them. However, she referred them to the Children's Hospital, and after a 4 hour wait, they x-rayed Keith's chest and confirmed he had pneumonia. They got home at 7:30 this morning, after not having slept a wink. This hasn't helped Edward's cold, but we are soldiering on. We have a course of antibiotics in case the pneumonia is bacterial. I'm desperately hoping it is, and that it isn't viral. I would hate for Malcolm to fall prey to it. I guess we'll have to wait and see.
In the meantime, Keith is resting and remains quite miserable. He didn't want his "Old McDonald's" for lunch, so we know he's still feeling pretty rotten. As Evelyn has said, "poor Keef". Here's hoping he's on the mend soon.
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