Gonna blog again

Well, I am back and need an outlet so blog here I come.

Autumn has been to the ER 3x in the past 3 months. First was for a horrible cough, fever spike wiht in an hour from normal to 104.7. Turned out to be pneumonia. Second was for a non stop cough and trouble breathing. Diagnosis was pneumonia came back. We were out of town and went to a different ER. Loads of anti-biotics and all seems better.

For the past year or so she has been saying she has problems catching her breath. I do this often also and did as a child too. Now it only happens when I am majorly stressed out or overly focus on my breathing so related the same thing to her. We didn't think there was anything actually wrong with her breathing.

Friday was our last ER visit. She has started shaking, throwing up and majorly freaking out because she thought she was going to die from not being able to breath. Said she wanted to die and couldn't breath. I somewhat expected the ER to send us away with a reference to see a child psychologist about having anxiety about breathing but I thought something might seriously be wrong as well.

As much as I teach myself about health and know alot of medical conditions, I know I don't know I don't know everything. After the hour+ wait in the ER, her breathing came back to normal and no more throwing up but the doctor did notice a slight heart murmur and ordered an ECG. The ECG shows abnormal results (whatever that means!) and he said he was very glad we came in. Based on this and other things in her medical history he picked up on things.

We have an appt with a pediatric cardiac pulmnologist (SP??) tomorrow. They will do an ultrasound of her heart and see what is happening and to what degree. Based on the symptoms and history, she likely has a hole in one of the walls of her heart. Worst case is open heart surgery. Best case is medicine to strengthen her heart and continued monitoring to make sure the hole closes. Both scenarios have very high success rates and she will live. The fact that I need to discuss something that causes doubt of her continuing to live has my stomach in knots.

Trying real hard to keep things normal around here but I feel like collapsing, crying and never moving again. Of course, Erik feels the same but with less talking. We are both extremely concerned. Father's day could have brought better news than this.

We are thankful and positive though. Thankful for health insurance, thankful it will be identified and treated and thankful the doctor found something. This explains alot of things we've noticed that were off since she was a baby.