Little Sick Boy

Our poor little SJ is one sick little boy!  Today, SJ was supposed to visit the pediatrician for his four month well visit and vaccinations.  Unfortunately, on Monday evening and through the night, his cold turned into a really nasty cough with wheezing when he breathed.  He also acted like he felt horrible and sounded very hoarse and weak when he cried.  So, instead of his well check, he had his first sick visit to the doctor's office!

He was diagnosed with bronchiolitis, and he got his first breathing treatment in the doctor's office.  He felt terrible, and Mommy strapping this mask to his face and forcing him to breathe the medicine did not make him feel any better at all!  After about twenty minutes, he finally gave up fighting the mask and just accepted that he was going to have to keep it on his face.  Here's his little pitiful self during the last few minutes of his treatment in the office:

Because he was not running a fever and was still eating/drinking well, he was not tested (and not diagnosed) with RSV.  We bought our own nebulizer to take home with us and, armed with over $100 in vials full of medicine, we were told to do at-home nebulizer treatments every four hours for the next ten days!

If you have to use this crazy machine to give your kid medicine, at least it can be a cute machine, right?

The little man taking his home breathing treatments:

 Still smiling despite his sickness!

Update: Despite his breathing treatments, SJ felt absolutely horrible for the next week.  After two days on the nebulizer treatments, he developed a very high fever (it stayed between 100-103 degrees for almost 3 days over the Christmas weekend).  Although he had been eating and taking his bottles well at first, he stopped eating and would only drink an ounce or two at each feeding for several days.  He was not sleeping well and was very lethargic, and everyone was very worried about him!  Luckily, he started to recover and feel a little better a few days after Christmas.  By the end of his ten-day treatment, he was back to his old self and feeling great.

Because of lots of drama that occurred during this whole sick time (mostly based on the fact that SJ's pediatrician didn't feel the need to see him at all for a recheck during this period despite his high fever, listlessness, and reduction in feeding or during a subsequent case of pink eye), we decided to switch pediatricians.  The new pediatrician thinks there was a good chance that SJ actually had the flu (or even RSV) and not bronchiolitis.  Either way, we were all totally happy when he completely recovered by early January and was back to his happy, cheerful self!