Breathing treatments begin!

We just started Kelsie's first breathing treatment last night, hypertonic saline.  Her doctor has talked about doing it for a while as a preventative measure but since she never had any respiratory symptoms, there was never any real indication to start it. Then she got that illness with the cough that never wanted to go away, so she felt it was a good time to start.

The first one was kind of rough. For both of us. She didn't like us putting that mask up to her face and I didn't like the fact that I had to. I felt full of tears inside thinking "this is permanent." I give breathing treatments to my patients and their parents have to give them at home too, but for them, its temporary or just when needed. For Kelsie, we have to do this EVERY DAY. SHE is going to have to do this every day! Its both a blessing and a curse. I'm so thankful this exists and that it will hopefully prevent her from getting as many lung infections and untimately prolong her life. But it still makes me sad that I have to make her do this every day. I will not waiver though. It too, like everything else will become part of our daily routine. We will figure out how to add this piece into our lives, embrace it, and thank God we have it available to keep our little girl healthy!

Kelsie got a baby doll after her first treatment. We told her she would get a prize if she did it so I had to follow through. I had a baby doll I was going to give her for Christmas but decided to return...needless to say, I decided to go ahead and give it to her as her reward for doing the breathing treatment. I guess we will need to scale down the prize value if this is going to be a daily routine!! :)