Friday, August 22, 2008

Family Down!

Everyone in my house has been felled with some illness for nearly three weeks. It started with Tallu having a fever and accompanying cough. Last Sunday my husband and I felt a little off, and later that afternoon I went down with a fever and slight cough. Two days later, my hsuband joins the high fever club.

Tallu's cough was not really improving, so last Wednesday I took her to the doctor, after I quit work (see last week's post.) There was no medicine I could give her, and the doctor sent us home with a plan to see her on this Monday, and to call if she took a turn for the worst.

We returned to the doc on Monday, and Tallu has bronchiolitis, or bronchitis lite, as her father and I called it. Bronchiolitis is an inflammation of the bronchioles, the airways that lead to the lungs. It is a virus that affects children under 2, and is more common among children who live in close quarters.

Going to a daycare where a child already has bronchiolitis helps spread the virus.

That's right. Tallulah was sitting in a room with an infected baby. The daycare workers said nothing to me about one of their children being sick, which pissed me off. Knowing a child was sick would not have prevented mine from becomming sick. It just would have been nice to know. How do I know there was a carrier? One of the workers, whom I happen to know, told me one of the children was sick. This was after Tallu had her fever, of course.

Bronchiolitis is a common childhood illness, but it can develop into something more serious. An article I read online says children who have had bronchiolitis may be more likely to develop asthma. More research needs to be done to clarify the relationship between asthma and bronchiolitis.

Tallu is doing better, her cough is sounding drier and is much less frequent. The doctor prescribed only Tylenol if she was very uncomfortable and to lower her fever. We bought a cool mist humidifier to soothe her at night, and did lots of sucking snot with the baby nasal aspirator.

The moral of this story: babies + daycare= sickness. If your child is sick and she's enrolled in daycare, do the rest of the parents a favor and keep your child at home. If you work for a daycare and you recognize a child is sick, do the children a favor and send that child home. And let the parents know someone was sick. You don't have to name names, but just communicate, please.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I feel for you, my baby had bronchiolitis as well. There is an aspirator that really has helped us, Nosefrida, we still use it for prevention, and so far so good.