Apparently I was mistaken when I thought that Cate’s cold was mostly over and done with. Yesterday when I picked her up at Patsy’s, she was coughing what seemed like an excessive amount. Patsy mentioned that she’d been coughing like that since she woke up from her nap. Huh. Weird.

We had to go run an errand in Redmond (not getting into details, but y’all? There is a customer service employee at Bank of America that I am sincerely hoping gets fired after all the crap she put us through), and Cate fell asleep on the way back. No biggie, I figured she was just bored, and she only slept about 15 minutes.

She was unusually cranky that evening, which should’ve struck me as odd, seeing as how she had taken a three hour nap that afternoon, and then also had a short power nap in the car. She even got mad during her bubble bath, which is usually one thing guaranteed to have her happy and laughing. I couldn’t get her to eat very much, and the coughing had never let up all evening. All of that should’ve been big ol’ red flags for the night ahead.

Last night, she woke herself up having a coughing fit at least four different times. Oh, and I think I forgot to mention this, but I’ve caught her cold, so I had taken NyQuil to get myself to sleep, and the constant wake-ups left me feeling not just loopy and tired, but also sort of hung over.

This morning I tried to get her to take some Motrin and she coughed so hard that she barfed it right back up. Righty-o. Off to the pediatrician, then!

The doctor said that the coughing was related to her asthma, and she gave her an oral steroid right there in the exam room (which Cate was not a fan of, and oh my lord, it took a long time to get it down with all the gagging she kept doing) and two puffs of her albuterol inhaler. I could tell she was better almost right away; while we were still in the doctor’s office, I noticed that she could sometimes go an entire minute or two without coughing! Wow! By the time she got home, she actually talked a little bit and smiled, which I hadn’t seen from her all day.

I called Patsy to let her know what was going on, and she said that if I wanted to bring her over so I could take a nap, that was fine. After all, if Cate’s cold is contagious, all the kids got exposed yesterday anyway. This is one of the reasons I love Patsy so much. How many people volunteer to take on a sick toddler? So that’s what I did, and I came home and took a looong nap. It was glorious.

Cate’s pediatrician said that if she isn’t 100% by tomorrow, I should bring her back to the office for another dose of the oral steroid. I’m hoping that with the dose she got today, and the increase of her albuterol (which we’ll be doing for the next few days), she’ll be back to her normal happy self before tonight.

I miss that smile.

Oh, and I really miss Dave right now. I sure could’ve used my night owl husband for some relief last night.

P.S. Unrelated: today is my mom’s very last chemo treatment. Hooray!!