Under the weather

Please pray for Sophie when you think of her.  She has been battling a respiratory virus the past couple of weeks.  An x-ray yesterday showed no presence of pneumonia, thankfully, but she’s definitely not up to par.  At first, I wasn’t actually sure it was a virus – she was having coughing and labored breathing, but no other cold symptoms.  But, now she’s having some congestion, so all evidence points to that.  She saw her pulmonologist today and did her pulmonary functioning tests.  These are to test how well she is able to move air, and also how much is going through her lung.  She doesn’t seem to mind them too much because she gets to pick a game on the computer to watch her progress while blowing through a mouthpiece, at the same time wearing little blue pinchers on her nostrils.  She picks the same games each time – bowling, popping a balloon, or blowing out candles.  Her scores are usually similar to what a person having an asthmatic episode would have.  She has her own baseline  - and since she’s compromised by the virus right now, her scores were about 30-35% lower than her baseline.  This means that when she’s playing or dancing, she’s out of breath much more quickly than usual, she’s a little paler, and those retractions in her neck are stronger and deeper.  She’s been more tired than usual of course, but she’s still eating well. 

She’s not on any steroids or antibiotics – we’re to continue treatments 4 times a day for the next week, along with pitty-pats (tapping her chest after the treatments).

But, we don’t like to see our baby having a hard time breathing.  Please pray God would heal her quickly, and that the breathing treatments will be enough to help her clear it all out over the next week.