A is for albuterol

And albuterol is what keeps S-Boogie's lungs clear when she starts having trouble with her asthma. We foolishly had our neice over to play with S-Boogie yesterday, even though she was coughing and had a sore throat. Well, this morning S-Boogie woke up wheezing and breathing really hard. We've spent all day keeping an eye on her and have given her a few albuterol treatments with her nebulizer. By tonight she still wasn't back to normal, so I took her in to the after-hours clinic so they could listen to her lungs and test her oxygen. It wasn't a fun visit at all. We've discovered that albuterol has the unfortunate side effect of hyperactivity. It's nice to know that it is working and getting absorbed into her system. It's not nice to be waiting in a small room in the doctor's office with a toddler who is high on her meds. We had to wait nearly 25 minutes. They were mostly filled with climbing up and down, up and down, up and down; running in circles; opening and shutting drawers, opening and shutting, opening and shutting; jumping; twirling; jumping; running; hitting mommy's leg, and so forth. Sigh. Then the doctor made me hold S-Boogie down while he pulled a giant ball of wax out of her ear. That brought her down from her high pretty quickly. Luckily her oxygen levels were good and the wheezing wasn't too bad, so we got to come home with a prescription for steroids and instructions to come back in a few days if she isn't all better. I felt a little nervous putting her to bed because she was still breathing a bit hard, but there's not much else we can do for her tonight. In the past, we've either ended up in the hospital or she's been better before bedtime. So I don't think I'll be sleeping well tonight. But, as much as I want to say that being the mom is hard, I bet it's even harder to be the 2 year old who has to sit through nebulizer treatments and get giant balls of wax scooped from her ears. I'm sorry, baby.