RSV(P)

I wish I could say this post is titled RSVP because Matt and I have reservations for a fancy restaurant, or plan to attend a super fun party this weekend, but alas, no. The RSV in the title stands for Respiratory Syncytial Virus, which Madelyn has been incubating for the last 48 hours. It's very serious, so we're lucky we caught it early, and ensures we'll spend the next 4-5 days cooped up at home hoping she recovers quickly.

What's strange is that she's just getting over an ear infection, and wasn't acting abnormal at all. She ran a small fever Tuesday night and started getting a bad cough but was still eating and sleeping well, which led me to believe she was fine. Yesterday about 5:30 p.m. I just had a feeling we needed to have her looked at. I call it divine intervention. Matt thought I was a little crazy, so I started to think maybe he was right, went upstairs and came back down 5 minutes later and said "we need to go". He looked at me like a loony, but started the car.

Sure enough, they diagnosed her pretty much as soon as we arrived, but we waited for the test to come back and 15 minutes later our suspicious were confirmed. RSV is essentially very advanced bronchitis, and it's the filling of the lungs with mucus sacks. It causes high fevers (highest so far around 102), tons of mucus in her head and chest, and other misc. breathing difficulties like wheezing and shortness of breath. She basically constantly breathes like I would if I just came back from running a few miles. Ok maybe A mile (it is winter and I'm very out of shape). It's also highly contagious, so the doctor guaranteed us that we're both in for it in the next few weeks. Yay. Luckily in adults it manifests itself as a cold, but for an asthmatic like me, it's sure to be loads of fun.

So far we've spent lots of time cuddling, watching Finding Nemo, taking steroids and asthma medicines to help the inflammation in her poor little lungs, not sleeping (that's just me), and then really getting our money's worth out of our Keurig machine as I compensate for the lack of sleep. We are so blessed that she has such a calm, sweet disposition, because even with raging fevers and the inability to breathe she's still just as wonderful as ever. And that's not just mom bias, it's true.

Please send lots of prayers our way because for a paranoid, neurotic mother like myself this is a bit difficult to handle :)