Elijah

The last few weeks have been rough here at the Coffman house. We have all been showing cold symptoms for several weeks. But Elijah seemed to just keep getting worse while the rest of us improved. Elijah would only cough at night and in the morning when he woke up. He would cough so severely that his eyes would kind of bulge out and then WATER, and his nose just ran and ran. It was horrible, his whole shirt would end up wet from tears, snot and slobber. On Thursday morning he coughed so severely that he actually threw up. So I called the doctor and that afternoon we went to see Dr. Harder. Unfortunately, when we went to the doctor Elijah did not cough, so the doctor wasn't able to hear his cough. The doctor said that Elijah looked and sounded like a perfectly healthy kid, except for how I had described his cough. The doctor thought that the cough sounded like it may be Whooping Cough. So the doctor took some samples and sent them to Madison to find out if he for sure had Whooping Cough. While we waited for the results to come back, Elijah was put on antibiotics and quarantined to the house for 5 days. Yesterday we found out that Elijah for sure does have the whooping cough, and so the rest of us were put on antibiotics as a precaution. My poor Elijah. He has been a real trooper and a tough little guy. I can tell that for the first few days of the anitbiotics he was miserable. Thankfully Elijah is doing much better. He looks and sounds so much better. His energy is back (which is rough since we are locked in the house.) But he has been as content as an almost three year old who hasn't left the house in almost two weeks can be, to play puzzles, cars and watch some disney movies. It is hard as a parent to see your little one sick. You try to protect them from everything that might hurt them. You get them immunized and you get them all their shots, and it is very upsetting to know that even with those immunizations you still can not prevent everything. The lady from the health department (yes we got a call from the health department because we have an "outbreak" of a highly contagious illness)said that even though Elijah has been vaccinated for the whopping cough there is still a 20% chance of catching it. It really makes you wonder about how protected your kids are from the other diseases they are immunized for. I am so grateful that Elijah has a good doctor who treated him proactively and who was willing to listen to me and how I described Elijah's cough. I am glad that no one else has gotten sick, especially Emme. Tomorrow Elijah is done with his quarantine! Yea! Elijah and I are so excited. Dustin is going to watch Emme tomorrow night for us, and Elijah and I are going to have some mom and son time. We are going to Elijah's favorite store Wal-mart, and we are going to get a big Icee and a cookie from Subway that we can eat while we walk the store.