great lungs breathe alike

"Say cough!", Tommy said to his brother when I took this picture. When Tommy was a baby he was allergic to everything. Eggs, berries, sugar, and all sorts of other things would have him in hives in only moments. When he had his first asthma attack at 16 months our doctor was not surprised, he'd had all the warning signs, allergies and eczema. Johnny has been a horse of a different color. He had colic and frequent ear infections but colic went away and he received tubes a couple of months ago. He still gets ear infections but has been otherwise quite healthy. I was really hoping that their little immune systems were different enough that Johnny would escape the Daniels family curse. On Thursday afternoon at playgroup he had his first attack. I watched him for a good thirty minutes before I could admit to myself what I was seeing. I was mightily disappointed. It was just the beginning. We spent the weekend in a cloud of albuterol. Ty was working so it was just the three of us. Poor John had a fever and a champion cough which his big brother has now picked up as well. I hate urgent care so I spent the weekend trying to keep Johnny's fever down at 102, after about three hours it would creep back up to 104 and we'd redose and start all over again. I took Tommy to a birthday party over the weekend only to have my friend call and inform me that he was miserable. I had been so busy trying to keep Johnny's fever down that I missed how terrible poor Tommy was feeling. I felt like a super competent mother, let me tell you. Hopefully my friends will forgive me for exposing their children to whatever plague my children have. We're off to the doctor this morning to see if he will give us some sort of a steroid to get these poor boys breathing again. So today I feel worn and pale and oh, so grateful for health insurance and pediatricians and nebulizers.