Second Verse, Same as the First

Thanks for your well wishes for my son. Last year he had a long-lasting and initially misdiagnosed ordeal with walking pneumonia. The first doctor we saw (the one who insulted me a while ago) walked into the exam room, prepared to diagnose the kiddo with asthma. Really, he seemed to be determined that it was asthma, even before examining the kiddo. He gave us an inhaler and sent us home, and a day or two later, the kiddo was coughing even more and vomiting blood, and believe me, I insisted on seeing a different doctor after that. But I digress from my original point, which is that I tend to be a little extra vigilant nowadays as a result of that terrible experience last year.

So the kiddo was in good spirits today, which I think is a very good thing, but he's once again coughing through his sleep, despite a dose of regular cough medicine (not triple whammy medicine -- see below) because the regular cough medicine has 10mg of dextromethorphan compared to the triple whammy medicine's 5mg. Sometimes he settles down for a few minutes and I think he'll get some rest, then he starts coughing again, occasionally to the point that he almost throws up from coughing so hard. I put a bucket next to the bed and told him how to use it, and he's used it once so far.

Now I'm just surfing the Web in the next room, periodically checking on him to turn him onto his side when his coughing gets too intense, making sure he remembers the bucket during the more intense bouts, and waiting for 11:00 so I can dose him with triple whammy stuff in the hope that the antihistamine helps him breathe through his nose more and therefore cuts down on the coughing despite the lower amount of cough suppressant.

Sometimes this all just feels like such a crapshoot.