Asthma

I write this as a plea for prayer...

Isabelle has suffered from a fierce cough for going on two weeks now. Her only symptom was this really strong cough- no fever, no cold. However, she has become very tired and hardly has any energy. She will get bursts of energy after resting for awhile and then will become very weepy and tired. Her appetite has also decreased dramatically over the past week. I had been giving her a prescription cough medicine for about a week and it had done virtually nothing to decrease the severity of the cough. Nothing was helping and finally, I knew I had to take her to the doctor. We ended up taking her to the Emergency part of the Clínica Bíblica, a hospital in downtown San Jose that really from all we've seen has excellent staff and care.

You can go to the emergeny room and be seen of course for emergencies, but also as if you were in an Urgent Care type situation. They have a pediatric doctor on call there as well, who sees walk-ins in his own private office.

So, while Matt and Ethan and Audrey waited for us, Iz and I went in to see what was going on...

The doctor was very thorough, which I appreciated. He asked me to come to the side of the table and handed me the stethescope and told me to listen to her lungs. Before this, I did not think she was weezing at all, mind you. But when I listened with the stethescope, I could hear in every breath a small whiney sort of noise. (This is where mom starts to get worried...)

We walk back over to the desk area and he proceeds to tell me she has the beginning stages of asthma. He says it is not full blown asthma- it actually is not yet considered asthma, but if left untreated, it will definetly turn into that. He also told me that she must get better, and if she does not, I will need to bring her back to him to re-evaluate and re-assess her situation. (Yeah...fightin back the tears here...)

So, for the next 10 days, she is on two different inhalers, one to reduce the inflammation and the other to take away whatever is causing the asthma like symptoms-cough and wheezing. Then, for another 10 days, she will continue treatment of the asthma with the inhaler. She also needs to get plenty of rest. Even the every day normal things are wearing her out right now. He also said that it is good for her to play when she feels like it- I just need to be careful and not let her get herself worn out. So I really have to watch her.

We would really appreciate, in fact, we would covet, your prayers right now. She is such a trooper having to take these medicines. She has to take them in the morning and also before bed. She actually likes to use the inhaler (How good is our God that He would allow her to actually enjoy this treatment...?)

We are nearing the end (hopefully...) of the rainy season, which means the increasing and ever-present mold will hopefully decrease (a little). However we live in a bustling city smack-dab in the middle of a tropical climate. Which translates to mucho (a lot of) pollution and yeah...mold...

We had no mold in our apartment to speak of. Here, in the house, we have considerable more. Outside on the back patio as well as in front on the side patio, it is pretty much like a jungle with all the mold that grows there. And, recently, we've found some in the girls' room. Because of normal city living, we have an enormous amount of dust around all the time, no matter how often we dust...

All of this combined, the doctor believes has attributed to this condition Isabelle now has. He is hopeful that the treatment will take care of it. However, this may be something she has to deal with at the least every year.

Please pray. We know our God is big enough to take this away from our precious little girl and get her well again!