Pneumonia, Bronchitis, and Birthdays, Oh My!

Well, it seems that our run of ill health is continuing. After last fall’s bout with H. pylori, we’re now dealing with pneumonia in two of our four kids, and bronchitis (not quite pneumonia) in another.

In the beginning… It all started when we were traveling over the holidays and our ten year old came down with a nasty bug that resulted in both exhaustion and a wicked cough.

The diagnosis: Upon our return, we took him to the doctor and learned that there was a respiratory virus making the rounds. No big deal, he’ll get better with time. Except that he didn’t. While the cough improved somewhat, it never completely cleared up. So when he developed a fever on Saturday he developed a fever, my wife took him to see the doctor. A quick exam and a chest x-ray later and we had a diagnosis. Pneumonia.

But wait, it gets better… Meanwhile, our three and five year olds came down with the same bug and, after starting to get a bit better, they both took a turn for the worse on Saturday night. Thus, we took them to the doctor on Sunday morning. As it turns out, our three year old had a clear case of pneumonia, whereas our five year old was still in the realm of bronchitis.

The treatment: Son #1 got an extremely painful antibiotic injection plus an Omnicef prescription, whereas Son #3 and Son #4 got Omnicef prescriptions plus oral steroids. As an aside, have you ever witnessed a three year old on steroids? It should be an interesting week…

So where how do birthdays factor into all of this? Well, today is Son #3’s sixth birthday, and he was supposed to have a birthday party yesterday. Given all that’s going on, we ended up have to cancel, so we had a family party instead of the bowling birthday party we had planned. The good news is that we were able to re-schedule so he won’t miss out entirely.

The silver lining: Our seven year old has skated through this pretty much unscathed. Interestingly, he had chronic ear infections and was frequently sick as a baby. Apparently his immune system is now built up to the point that he can take pretty much anything that Mother Nature throws at him.