Two worlds collide

Bubba and Snookie have been under the weather since Tuesday (really starting with Snookie). By Wednesday Bubba had taken the lead with a severe cough... that he would get in fits with. I tried a lot of different things, nice steamy baths/showers, vapo rub, Delsym, chlora tabs... by 5:30 yesterday it was obvious things weren't going in the right direction for Bubba. His breathing had become quite shallow and labored and then there was this weezing sound at the end of the breath... and he wanted to sit with me. The last part was actually what really worried me the most (oddly enough), he doesn't usually seek my consolation but he desperately just wanted to stay in my arms. He was scared and told me several times he couldn't breath and that it hurt.

Once Daddio arrived home from work, we decided that this was beyond our ability to treat and that he needed to go to an Urgent Care place with Bubba. Turns out that the little man was having an asthma attack (I'm sure most of you guessed that, but we don't have any experience with asthmas and we weren't sure if this was that!). What apparently happened in this case was that an upper resp. infection exacerbated the situation bringing on the attack. Several things were done to help him out including breath treatments, steroids, and antiobiotics... the result was Bubba being HIGH AS A KITE. When they got home around 9:00pm he was bouncing off the walls. Actually it was really funny. He is a high energy kid, but this was a totally different kind of behavior from him.

First, we didn't know that he had asthma. It is something that has been sitting in the back of my brain for about 6 months... not sure why, but I thought there was a chance. Not because he was showing signs, but because his biogolical mother was a smoker both in preg. and after (among many other bad or illegal habits during pregnancy) plus the non-existant prenatal and birth care she and he received.

Sitting at home worried about my son and waiting to hear from Daddio, I was also struggling with another emotion... sheer ANGER. Why? Because I (we) work so hard to provide a very loving and healthy environment for the boys... making sure their nutrition and sleep habits are met in the best way possible, everything they need and want is provided. But no matter how hard we work, there are things that were done to them by their birth parents that I simply can't undo! You look at those faces, and while I don't have infant pictures of them... I can imagine... but I can't imagine how someone... a mother could do the things she/they did. My anger is at the birth parents... the sperm and egg donor who didn't care (I certainly don't not consider them to be the mother and father, that would be way too generous based on their behavior), who were too selfish, they couldn't take care of the boys, but they were able to evade the law for more than 2 years, running from CPS...

Today... today I have had to call our insurance provider, I've had to deal with our prescription provider, I have to take the boys to their regular Pedi, I have to drive half and hour to get a nebulizer that our insurance won't let us pick up at the pharmacy, administer breathing treatments, go back to the pharmacy to pick up more meds for the boys, give tons of meds for the infection that both Snookie and Bubba have, had to cancel Bobcat's birthday party this weekend because they (dr.) said that they boys won't be healthy enough for that... the list goes on and on... which now include Bubba having asthma and all that goes along with that.