Pneumonia in both lungs

It's been a rough couple of weeks here in San Carlos.

Carter was sick for five days with a fever, conjunctivitis in both eyes, an ear infection, and an upper respiratory infection. He's been on a significant dose of antibiotics since last Wednesday evening.

The next day, Riley started to feel sick and ended up with a fever as well. We didn't think much of it because Carter had just had a nasty cold. Anyway, on day 6, Riley still wasn't improving. I called the advice nurse at Kaiser and she wanted me to take him to the ER, since he was having a little bit of labored breathing. We decided not to do that because he showed improvement after some Tylenol reduced his fever and his breathing became more natural and relaxed.

This morning I took him to the pediatrician and he could hear crackling sounds in both of his lungs. We were sent for a chest x-ray and there was quite a bit of white wispy marks on the x-ray confirming "double pneumonia," although he said that the right lung was worse than the left lung.

He was prescribed azithromycin (a powerful antibiotic), and we will go back tomorrow late morning for a follow-up appointment. He may end up with an albuterol inhaler, but it causes an increased heart rate and we wanted to avoid that until Dr. Tarnoff gave it the green light.