A new cycle begins.

And so Mercury is finally out of Retrograde.  I'm no astrology buff, but I gotta say, with the last couple months we've had, this is a HUGE relief.  I don't know what this new cycle is, but I'm already looking forward to it.

Mercury came out of Retrograde with a bang, though.  Mozart hadn't been feeling well for about a week and woke up on Sunday not quite himself.  I'm not one to overreact with kid-stuff anymore.  Poor Mozart - they say that after the first kid, parents tend not to freak out about the little stuff anymore.  And by the third kid, a parent may not think to take their kid with a  fractured arm to the hospital (this happened to the Wife - she reports having to "cry in my bed for hours before she eventually took me").  Well, having been foster parents, we don't overreact about kid stuff, and in that department we might have what you call the Duggar Syndrome (just now named after that family with insanely-crazy and ever-growing numbers of children), after having had 17 kids through the house. 

So, yeah, he was sick on Sunday.  I noticed it in the morning when he slept until 8:30am (what!?!, and YAHOO!!, and, um, wow, that NEVER happened before).  Then he was wheezy and raspy and breathing kinda quick.  He was running around like usual most of the time, but then would poop out and get clingy.  After nap, instead of running about and playing he crawled up on the couch and just lay there like a tired old man.  I should have been alarmed.  Instead, I took a picture.  By that night though, I started to get this nagging feeling that it might be more serious, and started to worry about him all on his own in his room by himself while we slept. 

I'd recently heard about RSV and how dangerous it could be (somehow I missed the hype about it when we were foster parents), and thought to look it up.  Well, yeah, the website said this:

Call the doctor immediately if he has one or more of the following symptoms:

• Labored or fast breathing (faster than 40 breaths per minute when not crying), flaring nostrils, the rib cage expanding more than usual with each breath, wheezing, grunting when breathing
• A cough that's getting worse after the first few days
• Difficulty feeding
• Bluish lips or fingernails

He was still eating and his color was good, but that first bullet up there had me alarmed (um, finally!) because I counted his breathing at 59 per minute and I think they had been faster earlier in the day, and he was definitely using a lot of muscles to breathe, and he was wheezing and sometimes grunting.  I called the pediatrician and the on-call didn't even let me get past saying how fast he was breathing, she just said, "Go, now, to the ER." 

So we did.  His respirations were 66 (much to high) and his oxygen levels were 92 (too low).   They gave him Albuterol and a chest x-ray* and five hours later, after some talk of him not being where they'd like to see him yet with his oxygen levels, we were discharged with diagnoses of "acute asthma attack" and "bronchiolitis, possibly caused by RSV", nebulizer for more Albuterol treatments and an antibiotic.  They said to give him the neb treatment when we got home and every four hours if he needed it, but that we shouldn't wake him because he'll wake up if he needs a treatment. 

Well, he woke up two hours later.  Definitely needing another treatment. The Duggar Syndrome was now completely gone and replaced by Frantic First Mommy Syndrome.  Thankfully, I had enough sense to call the ER, rather than just taking him back for another $100, and they said he could really have it every two hours, but if it was any less than that or if the treatment didn't work, then we did need to take him back in. 

Somehow we made it through the night, and I stayed home with him in a sleepless/stupefied state.  Took him into his regular pedi and they did the RSV test there and a script for Prednisone to help the Albuterol work** because it was still not working as well as he'd have liked.  The pedi is not giving him a diagnosis of Asthma - yet - because this is only his 2nd episode of weird respiratory stuff.  The test for RSV came back negative today.  This is a huge relief, in a way, but also begs the question of why he had such a problem.  The pedi says that it could be asthma - I have the exercise induced kind - and also, because I took so much Tylenol during my pregnancy with Mozart (seriously, three times a day, every day for the last two trimesters, didn't touch the pain) and they have recently come out with a study saying there is a link (apparently, there are other studies, but I didn't ever hear about this until after he was born!!), but he's still not ready to give the diagnosis.  

Anyhoo, we all survived, and we're ready for that new cycle now.  But a couple things of note:

* A baby chest x-ray is a horrible thing.  They have this plastic contraption that you have to stick the baby in, with his hands over head, squish him in, strap his head in, while he screams.  The respiratory therapist gave us a head's up, thank goodness, cause I'd have been freaked if I just went in there without warning.

** Albuterol is kiddy speed.  Add Prednisone and you have kiddy crack.  Mozart is generally a typical 20 month old.  Usually very mellow, with little bouts of tantrums.  This kid is currently a maniac.  He is crawling out of his skin.  He tried to flip the coffee table for gits and shiggles.