Pneumonia AGAIN

Yes, Hannah has pneumonia AGAIN! The poor little thing seems to be a magnet for bacterial pneumonia. This is the 7th time she's had it in the past 2 years. Her most recent case was only 2 months ago right after her surgery. UGH! Besides the pneumonia, this time she also has a partially collapsed lung. That scares the begeezus out of me. The urgent care doctor says we don't really need to worry about it unless she gets worse, but I'm worrying anyway. Scarring also showed up on this most recent chest x-ray. The radiologist said it was from past cases of pneumonia. I worry that all these cases of pneumonia are going to permanently damage her lungs and I'm also concerned about WHY she gets this pneumonia all the time. What is causing her to be so susceptible? I know that Tiffany (Hannah's birthmother) has severe allergies and asthma and Chase (Hannah's brother) battles croup and ends up in the ER for breathing treatments from it frequently, but neither of them get pneumonia. Please pray for my little girl that she recovers quickly from this and that we can get hooked up with a pediatrician here quickly and get to the bottom of all of this. On a side note, I am also sick. Somehow I managed to get strep throat and pinkeye. Thankfully Hannah didn't get either of those from me and Kyle seems to have mostly escaped it too.

Lately Hannah's defiance and sassiness has gotten out of control. She is blatantly disobedient and speaks very disrespectfully to us. It's like she's 2 going on 16! We've tried several traditional systems of behavior management and discipline, but nothing really seems to work well with Hannah so we are going to go out on a limb and give one of the more unusual methods a try. It's called the Nurtured Heart Method and was pioneered by Howard Glasser. Kyra at This Mom first introduced me to this method. At first pass I thought it sounded fine, but that it was not my kind of thing. It was way too involved for my way of thinking. However, as things slowly spiraled down hill after our moved it became apparent that Hannah needed something more. It couldn't hurt to give Nurtured Heart a try. So I checked the book out of the library and set to work reading it straight through. We are all set to give it a try as soon as Hannah is feeling better. Wish us luck. If you want to know more about the specifics of Nurtured Heart, click on the link to Kyra above. She's done an excellent job through several posts of the basics of Nurtured Heart and how they've applied it at their house.

Here's my autism blogger of the day Full Soul Ahead written by Michelle. Michelle's oldest daughter has Asperger's Syndrome. She writes about daily life as well as some of Riley's challenges. They are currently in the process of getting an autism service dog for Riley and she has written several wonderful posts about how service dogs can help those with autism. Check her out. She's a great read.