An Ear Infection and Fluid in Her Lungs

Katie and winter have never gotten along all that well. Each year, as the temperature drops, she begins coughing, wheezing, and having trouble sleeping at night. Eventually it gets bad enough that she has to use a nebulizer to break up the mucus in her lungs and allow her to breath easier. That is how we ended up discovering that she had leukemia last winter. She had been sick for several days and even the nebulizer wasn't helping her to fight it off. She was exhausted from lack of sleep, and as we discovered at the hospital, lack of red blood cells. We had become so accustomed to her being sick that it was only after she really took a turn for the worst that we took her to the doctor.

This year, we are having none of it. Katie began coughing again as soon as we had a few cold days in a row and we began listening to her breathing very carefully. She was wheezing a little, but it all seemed to be upper respritory. A few days later it was worse. She was still coughing and wheezing more and it was sounding deeper in her chest. We used the nebulizer but it didn't seem to have any effect. So we took her to the doctor.

As it turns out, she has an upper respritory infection, and her lungs do sound like they have some mucus in them. She also has a bad ear infection that she has not complained about. After having sorted all of that out and taken a trip to the pharmacy, she was back home with a new bottle of Amoxicylin. Lets hope she gets better quickly and can stay strong and healthy for the foreseeable future.