A Long Road

So until the beginning of this month, Clayton had been doing awesome on his oxygen sprints--he was up to five hours off during the day and probably could have gone more if I hadn't taken it slow. But then sickness hit. He started needing more oxygen around the first week of March and it's steadily gotten worse and worse. We've been doing lots of breathing treatments, and still haven't seen any change for the better. The crazy thing is he hasn't run fever or "acted" sick during all this time. I kept him home last week from therapy to see if that would help, and between staying in all week and the extra steroids, he almost drove me crazy! He had just a tad too much cabin fever! I finally let him go to therapy this week on "light duty" mainly for both of our sanitys, and he was soooo glad to see everyone at the clinic. But that didn't change the fact that he was still needing way too much oxygen. Finally took him to the doctor this morning, and guess what? Clear chest x-ray. Normal blood gas. SOOO, what the heck does that mean? Means he's not deathly ill for one thing, but that this cold he has is affecting him far worse than the rest of us. So we'll keep doing breathing treatments and pray that he slowly gets better. (Or quickly gets better!)

But this has opened my eyes to just what a long road we have to a completely "oxygen-free" life we have. I knew he would have to sleep with it for lots longer than he would need it during the day, but I guess I thought the days of colds (or a virus?) affecting him this much were behind us. As usual, I thought wrong.

Please say a prayer for Clayton's lungs tonight/today. Pray they will be strong enough to oxygenate better and that all the congestion clears up. THANK YOU!