Sick and sicker

Little Miss Cutie-Pie

Doctor Finn and his impatient patient

A sick little girl with Oma and Opa

Breathe, breathe, breathe

Well, sorry we haven't updated in quite a while. Sickness has struck again. As soon as Finn's antibiotics from the hospital were used up he started coughing again. That was a good week ago, and to make a long story short it looks like Finn and Neil brought an aggressive type of virus, called RSV, home from the hospital. After a few days with high fevers, bad coughing and runny noses both kids were put on antibiotics (AGAIN!); Lily also had an ear infection. We have never seen poor Lily so sick and feverish, especially not day after day. Of course the antibiotics did nothing to fight the virus, but at least they took care of Lily's ears. (And gave her a bad diaper rash.) Unfortunately Claudia got sick, too, and is just now slowly getting better a week later. We were lucky that Claudia's parents came to visit last week; they came by airplane - Karin on Tuesday and Harald on Thursday night. They stayed until Sunday night and were a big help. We didn't get around to do all the fun things we had planned, like going to the pool, but they took the kids for walks in the sun while Claudia was resting in bed. We took both kids to the doctor again today, and while Finn's lungs finally sound better Lily's is doing much worse than a few days ago. The doctor was quite shocked. Her breathing is really labored, and she has to inhale a LOT now. We hope she will be better soon!



Also, all the test results from the hospital are here. Finn does not have cystic fibrosis or tuberculosis, and he is not allergic to anything it seems. They tested him for every allergen under the sun, three long pages. They did find bacteria in the fluid they took from his lungs, streptococcus pneumoniae, but the antibiotics at the hospital should have taken care of those. That still doesn't explain why he is so prone to pneumonia and lung trouble, so the search continues.

So what's Lily up to these days?

Here is a little video of Lily. She is almost 9 months old, so she's been out of my tummy as long as she was inside. I must say the time I am spending with her seems to go by much faster than the time I spent waiting for her. But then I didn't have the greatest pregnancy and was VERY tired, so the days seemed to never end. Lily is a temperamental little girl and very sweet. She is quite mobile now and has even started cruising along the couch. Our therapist (who we are not seeing anymore as her feet are declared okay now!) predicted she might walk at 10 months old. That would only be another month or two and somehow I am not ready for her to grow up so fast. Lily pulls up on everything now, but has yet to figure out how to get back down gracefully. Sometimes she will fall on her bum, but most of the time she will call "mamama!" to her rescue when her chubby little legs get tired. Lily's new favourite spot is under the dining room table because 1) she usually finds something yummy there and 2) she can pull up on the bar underneath it. Of course she can neither get down nor crawl backwards, so it seems I am under there all the time too.

After having figured out all that crawling and standing stuff Lily is now becoming a very talkative person. I love the way she talks to her toys. Maybe I can post a video of her babbling soon, but they take forever to upload, so not today.

Home at last

Well, a groggy Neil and Finn are home! Finn wasn't too happy when he came, but it didn't take him long to start playing with his toys again. It also helped that he got two small gifts and a chocolate muffin as a welcome. Lily was really excited to see him, too! Finn will have to take antibiotics for another week and hopefully he will be all healthy after that. So far the tests have not turned up anything really. Some results won't be in for a week, though. They seemed determined to find the underlying cause for Finn's frequent illnesses (3 pneumonias in a couple months), so they did A LOT of testing. We'll see. For now I am just glad to have them both back here. Unfortunately, Neil must have caught something too, hopefully he can fight it off without getting really sick!

A rough night

Finn (and Neil, too) had a rough night at the hospital. Finn woke up projectile vomiting at around midnight; Neil said it was terrible. Also his fever went up to 40°C (104 F), so they had to call a doctor. The doctor took some more blood and Finn got fluids and antibiotics through his IV. Today he is feeling better, but they think he might have caught a stomach virus, because these complications are not common with the kind of procedure he had. They did the cystic fibrosis test this morning and postponed the chest x-rays to in a few weeks. They flushed out Finn's lungs yesterday, which might make the x-ray look atypical. So they want to wait with that until Finn's system has calmed down a bit. If Finn won't get worse again him and Neil will come home today. I can't wait to have them back!