Fresh as the Morning Dew

Maggie's respiratory issues require constant vigilance. She coughs almost continuously and with the weather getting colder this will only get worse over the next few months.  Some of that is simply her anatomy, some if it is the trach, and some of it is the allergens present in the environment that irritate her airway. I can't do anything about the first two things, but I am trying to improve the dust level around here. 

Today was an all out assault. The housekeeper was here (cue Hallelujah chorus) and I also made arrangements to have the heating ducts cleaned out. I was hoping to arrange for them to come when Maggie wasn't here, but it didn't work out that way. I was concerned that the work itself would raise all sort of dust but that was not a problem. Not only was everything fine for Maggie's health, but had an absolute ball watching them. She cracked up every time they fired up their giant vacuum and attacked a new air duct. Maggie was laughing so hard that she was making herself cough and having trouble breathing. How's that for irony. 

Years of household dust and dog hair were sucked into that machine. The guy was concerned that we hadn't done this in a while. He's right. We haven't. Ever. I'm not proud of that, especially knowing what a difference it made. The Mother of the Year prize may have slipped through my fingers for neglecting this for so long, but it's done now. In fact if Maggie wasn't coughing so much I probably wouldn't have thought to do it at all. But it smells so clean in here right now, that I won't be so lax in the future.

I feel like I'm a Glade commercial. 

Dog gone it

Something someone said about allergies brought this story to mind:

A few years ago, Maggie was in the hospital for one of those long stretches – maybe three weeks. Those are hard on Maggie, of course, but they are also tough on the entire family. Out home life is completely disrupted because I stay with Maggie the entire time. The boys, who were still at home had to adjust to a house without mom and generally without dad too. Steve came home to sleep and usually fed the boys, but between work and the hospital, he was not at home very much.


Of course, the boys worried about Maggie, but these hospitalizations had become routine for all of us. There were certainly times Maggie was in grave danger, but we only told the boys when it was absolutely necessary. We did not want to alarm them prematurely or (God willing) unnecessarily.

They spent a fair amount of time visiting in the hospital as well. On one visit, Eddie was laying at the foot of Maggie’s bed reading a magazine when the young resident came in with some results of an allergy test. Maggie has multiple food and medication allergies, which we already knew about, but this was the test for allergens in the environment. Turns out she has a lot of those too. Cats, dogs, mice, dust etc

Her allergy numbers for dogs was really high,.(And yes we had a dog then and still do.)The young doctor, being very thoughtful, did not want to say this in front of Maggie’s brother. Rather than give the information directly, he just cited the numbers allowing us to draw our own conclusions. Presumably he figured Eddie wasn’t paying sufficient attention or wasn’t going to catch the gist of what he was saying. What he didn’t realize is that my boys spend a lot of time in hospitals and can understand doctor speak very well.

Eddie whipped his head around and said, “Maggie’s allergic to dogs??!!??”

The resident looked very uncomfortable to be part of this moment when a kid learned that his sick sister might mean we had to get rid of the dog..

I said to Eddie evenly, “looks like she is”

Eddie went right back to his magazine and said “Then Maggie’s going to have to move”

I just laughed. It was never really an issue. We use life as a measure, not just a test result. We have to or Maggie would live in a bubble. Maggie had peacefully coexisted with the dog since she was about three years old. Having this test result information was not going to change anything. Eddie knew that, I knew that, even Maggie knew that, but that kind young doctor looked very confused.

One of these things is not like the other,

I'm glad I posted that picture of the deliveries yesterday. Something about it caught my eye. One of the boxes of Maggies' food had different writing on the box. I had to investigate. Sure enough, one box was a different type of food.

Good thing I caught that. For most people that would be no big deal, but Maggie is allergic to everything under the sun. Allergic enough that she has landed in the hospital several times because of allergies. Using the wrong food could have been disastrous. Presumably we would have noticed when we opened the box, but the cans are exactly the same size and shape, only the labels are slightly different.

Funny how I noticed it in a photo but didn't notice it while I was looking right at it.