Spoke Too Soon - Poorlier and Poorlier

Did I say that Emily was getting better? Er, scrap that.

We've had a very scary three nights. Poor little lamb just keeps getting coughing fits that she can't recover from....and can hardly breathe through. She's absolutely terrified when it happens and it's hugely difficult for me and Jon to calm and comfort her when we're half scared witless ourselves. We've been seconds away from calling an ambulance on at least four occasions :-(( Probably the only reason we haven't is that the merest subtle-as-we-can mention of it to one another makes things even worse as she's frightened sick of having to go to hospital; somehow we've just about managed to get her back from the brink and calm enough to breathe again each time, but it's been touch and go. Her asthma inhalers have stopped having any effect at all. Emily has also lost a lot of her hearing since Saturday (although neither ear was in pain), to the extent that you can be having eye contact with her and speaking to her and she can't hear a word you're saying, which is is extremely distressing for her.

This morning we got an emergency doctor's appointment; at this point I should hold my hands up and admit that it was at Jon's insistence - I was under the impression that what she was going through was the after effects of the bronchitis and that it would ease up over the next couple of days and we just needed to keep an eye on her or go ahead with that ambulance call if an attack was too bad to cope with. Ha! Crap Mother Alert. I always did say he had stronger instincts than me. Turns out that the bronchitis has progressed to a secondary infection of both lungs, and the ear infection she did have has spread to both ears. We now have a different course of antibiotics and steroid tablets as an emergency measure to calm her lungs - she's going to switch to a new/different asthma inhaler but apparently that will take about 3 weeks to kick in and doc says it's far more urgent than that to prevent further damage. We have to go back next Tuesday, whether or not there's any improvement, to discuss further treatment :-((

Basically, she's one very, very poorly young lady. Oddly enough she's not too bad at various points throughout the days - although extremely tired since it must be getting on for a full 2 weeks now since her last proper night of sleep, and very upset over her hearing. It's the night when the problems really kick in, but then asthma is always worse at night anyway. And there was me thinking the other day how well she'd done in not needing any asthma medication since she came out of school. Talk about life giving you a kick up the backside.

Anyway. Ironically, yesterday we had an excellent "work" day, with lots and lots achieved - Emily had been desperate to get back to work, I think because it made things seem "normal" again as much as anything, after weeks of disruption. We decided to work downstairs in the big dining room at the table instead of lounging about on the floor of the landing/playroom bit, and I think that made a big difference too, psychologically at least. And it was more comfy for me!

Emily chose to work on poetry first, and the task in hand was to practise the use of similies by writing a "feelings poem". This was her fantabulous result:

Egyptian Moods

Sometimes I feel....

As angry as a God without a temple
As bored as a scribe with nothing to write
As hungry as the peasants in the fields
As lonely as a jackal roaming the desert

But more often I feel....

As elegant as an Egyptian dancer
As entrancing as Isis in the sky
As excited as a crocodile that's seen its meal
As happy as a Pharaoh in his palace
As honourable as a priestess serving the Gods
As relaxed as the cats watching over Bastet
As sleepy as a slave building a pyramid
As wonderful as Ra making the sun light

I was very impressed with that, especially the speed at which she came up with it, it just poured out of her! After that we did some maths.......with slightly less enthusiasm, but at least it got done, then plenty of spelling. After lunch Emily tried out the lavender eye bag she sewed the other day and practised her various yoga breaths with it on her eyes as I read her some meditations. She then wrote that up in her yoga journal.

Next we started some work on chakras, looking indepth at what they are, and focusing on the root chakra to begin with. Emily did various meditations and exercises and we discussed how they felt and what chakra imbalances might mean. She took to that like a duck to water and is very keen to look at the rest; don't know what an LEA bod might make of that, but there you go. Think if they ever get back in touch with us I'll send them a photo of Emily reading tarot cards and see if they can fit that into their "suitable for age, aptitude and ability" file.
After that we went back to our local geography project; Emily sketched a map of our village showing the major roads and the river, then she devised a key and correctly plotted all kinds of places on the map from our house to the school (which she chose to mark with an exclamation mark having decided a skull and crossbones would be too detailed, rofl) to the ducks to the sweet shop to the library and about a dozen others. It was quite hard for her to work out the orientation of the map and what went where but she perservered and was very pleased with the end result.
We're going to look at the (sooooooo many!) new housing developments in the village next, discussing the pros and cons of this particular issue and the impact it has had/will have on the village. Might get Emily to make a short video to go in a powerpoint presentation about it. As much of our local work involves getting outside into, well, the locality, that might go on hold for a few days though until she's a little better.

And that's about the size of it. We did make it to yoga this evening - when she's determined, she's determined - which seemed to have been fun. Yoga test next week. Oh, and Romeo must have had a lucky escape today. I noticed him asleep on Emily's bed mid afternoon without his collar on, so I assumed Jon must have thought it was time to shut them in (we're still closing the flap before it gets dark and we take their collars off once they're in) and thought nothing more of it - until a few minutes later Ju-Ju arrives in with wet paws and collar intact - Jon hadn't shut the flap or removed Romeo's collar at all. He'd gone and lost it somewhere. After a search, Jon found it - hanging from a wrought iron garden seat. Psycho-moggy must have got himself tangled in the iron somehow. Thank heavens for quick release/snap off collars!