Breathe normally...just breathe

I've posted many times before about our sweet Eva and her breathing difficulties. It started when she was 7 months and has revisited her from time to time, always ending with her on a nebulizer breathing machine, which she detests, and me hoping that whatever medicine she actually breathes in will somehow make a difference. She is healthy one minute, and then can be coughing to the point of not being able to catch a breath in between coughs in literally a blink of an eye. I can tell exactly by the sound of the cough what we're in for.

I heard her cough two nights ago in her sleep and my heart just sunk. Taking good health for granted is something that I never do with her. We've tried, in vain, to figure out what trigers it. The only thing Naki and I are ever able to find as a commonality for each time she gets sick is that it is a change in the weather...a semi-drastic change. And since it's warmed up this week, I was not surprised. I don't know if it's pollen being released that she's allergic to, and the doctors were hesitant to say she's asthmatic since it's so inconsistent and doesn't really present like asthma. Either way, we're stuck with it until hopefully she grows out of it. Until then, I have a baby with a fever that is almost impossible to keep in a safe range who breathes so shallow it scares me.

Yesterday was pretty bad. Line was reading to her while she laid on the couch with her "Daddy Blanket" that Auntie Mona made her for Christmas.

I know they're sick when they start falling asleep wherever and whenever, which she did many times yesterday. Last night I hardly slept because I was so terrified she'd start seizing from her high fever. We had a woman and her young baby live with us when I was a teenager and that little baby got a fever and starting seizing...an image I will never ever forget. I know I probably over worried and over thought every single move and sound she made, but she was laying on Naki's pillow, and in the middle of the night started twitching and moving similar to the way Naki did the night he died. Yeah...didn't really sleep after that.

In those moments when I realize my inability to have any control over my loved ones' mortality, I tell myself that death is nothing to fear. Death is actually, when considering all the things that could go wrong with any of my babies, what I would prefer. Them having to stay mortal and deal with trauma seems more difficult than just dying from the trauma. Who even sits around and thinks about these things? I never did before I experienced our family's trauma of my best friend dying and was left mortal to live and deal with it. I reminded myself to breathe, just breathe. There was nothing more I could do for her. Whatever happens in my babies' lives I have to believe is what's best for them...that God is somehow managing and overseeing all of this. If I don't grip tightly onto that thought I easily lose my ability to want to go on.

I watched her for a long time, until around 6:00 when her fever broke. Of course...right when everyone is supposed to get up for school. I didn't care, but instead just went to sleep and thought, "If their sleeping patterns are consistent today with how they were on their day off, then they should just sleep right through the hour we usually wake because it's a school day!" Thanks to Auntie Ginny, who despite having an important training she was doing this morning, got the girls dressed and out the door for school. She is still sick...it seems to linger for some time. Now let's cross our fingers that the fever doesn't return...we learned from the last time she was sick that a second fever is a bad sign. Last time it was the precursor to her bronchitis...