PeppA's mom went in late Wednesday night/early Thursday morning. The usual COPD aggravated by flu/cold/bronchitis. Basically, she can't breathe. On a good day, she has about 25% of her original lung capacity left. On a bad day, she doesn't have any.
Thursday morning, after I took the older boys to school, PeppA said she had to go to her doctor's to get looked at. She'd been fighting the flu/bronchitis for days, and wasn't getting any better, even with prescription meds. Her doctor took one listen to her lungs, and told her to get up to the hospital ASAP. Great. I had to be at work at 3 pm, and both of the other caregivers are in the hospital.
To make matters worse, ALL FIVE of the kids are sick.
My boss wasn't to happy that I had to call in, especially when I'm not sick, but everyone else is.
The first day, PeppA called me and said she had been diagnosed with asthmatic bronchitis (which she gets at the drop of a hat, always has). The second, she told me she had been upgraded to asthmatic pneumonia. Last night, she called and told me that it was in fact just severe asthma. Her asthma has apparently gotten to the point that she's going to have to start taking breathing treatments every day now. She doesn't want to do that, as the albuterol gives her funny reactions
We also think we may know what triggered her asthma attack. Our vacuum cleaner broke a couple months ago, and we haven't been able to do much vacuuming. So, there's a buildup of dust in the carpets. This freaky weather that we've been having lately, where it gets warmer than usual, made it rather warm in the house at night. I had just recently flipped our ceiling fan to blow downwards, instead of pulling the air up. Well, I didn't clean all the dust off the fan when I did that, so there's a little more dust than usual in our bedroom.
I've been trying to get some cleaning done lately. PeppA bought a new vacuum a couple days before she went to the hospital. I swept the living room floor with it. I've also cleaned the vent in our room, and the grates on the box fan in our bedroom. Today, I'm going to do the other vent in the living room, and both ceiling fans, plus a little laundry.
BTW, PeppA just called and said that she'll probably be release tomorrow. She was hoping to be released today.
I'm not really sure how her Mom is doing. Usually, she G'Ma goes in to the hospital, she's there for a week, or longer. Last winter, she went in several times, one of those was for 3 weeks.