Tuesday, March 25, 2014

One down

In the middle of the night Alex woke me up. "I can't breathe." So I gave her my inhaler and went back to sleep. Apparently she just sat there for a few minutes, before waking me up again with the same complaint. I gave her my inhaler again and this time watched to make sure she did it right. We sat in the dark staring at each other. Alex shook her head. Right as she started to say, "It still isn't working," I could tell her lungs opened up. I sent Alex back to bed.

This morning she woke me up over an hour before anyone's alarm was supposed to go off. "I don't feel good." So I told her to stay home. By the time I'd gotten to work she'd texted me twice - that her throat hurt and that her chest hurt. When I called Alex, she cried. I called Doug to make an appointment but the woman told me nothing was available until tomorrow afternoon. I took the appointment to reserve it, and told Alex. She told me she couldn't wait that long and announced she was taking over my inhaler.

I called the office back and asked them to bump me up if anyone cancelled because my sister was really uncomfortable. After work when I was a block away from home, Doug called. I kept walking, and ran up the stairs instead of taking the elevator to get to Alex while he was still on the phone.

I gave Alex my phone and told her to talk to Doug. She sounded so pitiful. I went to change out of my work clothes and Alex came in and laid across the foot of the bed. She told me Doug was emailing a list of things to buy at the pharmacy. I forwarded that to Josh and an hour later Alex was drugged up with Mucinex. Hopefully tomorrow she wakes up better, because Al has a test.

2 comments:

Lil'Sis said...

Hope she's on the mend soon - my three are all just getting over pneumonia.

You took very good care of her:) Well done!

Karen said...

I'm so sorry Alex is sick and hope she feels better soon. Do you guys all have asthma? Doug should prescribe a steroid inhaler like Pulmicort that you can use at the very first hint of an upper respiratory infection. This should help keep the asthma flare to a minimum and reduce your need for the rescue inhaler.

Asthma can be so scary.