A New Diagnosis - October 4

Last Tuesday you started coughing.

By Wednesday morning your nose was running like a faucet, your eyes were red and you just had that look that clearly said "Mama, hold me I don't feel good."

Thursday greeted us with a short-lived fever and a not great report from the night nurse.

By Friday, your nose had dried up and eyes weren't watering. But that cough.

So we ran through the scenarios that have followed a dry, racking cough in the past:
-- not likely to be an ear infection; no drainage from your ears and the fever didn't stick around.
-- not anything in your lungs; they sounded clear and the nebulizer treatments weren't helping.
-- nothing to do with your trach; it was clear and you weren't coughing anything up.
-- possibly allergies, but the cough syrup and allergy meds weren't making a dent.

I gave in and took you to the doctor where we got a diagnosis I never imagined:
You have a cold.

Yep. Plain and simple: a cold.

Nothing life threatening.
Nothing that requires hospitalization.
Nothing that requires massive amounts or intense regimens of medicine.
Nothing that could delay the progress we're making toward removing your trach.

Just a cold.

It was all I could do to wipe the smile off my face and hold the laughs in until I got to the car.

We just got our first perfectly boring, nothing but ordinary, run of the mill diagnosis!