Lena's medical adventure

Lena is 17months old now and a real trooper. She giggles in the face of pain that would bring any average toddler to tears. This week has been a real trial though.
A month ago she had some sort of cold-like virus that caused wheezing and a cough that made her sound like a pack-a-day smoker. The pediatrician had me do a nebulizer treatment on her in the office (20 minutes of torture she fought so hard that her diaper came off and she peed on my lap) and then sent us home with an inhaler. A week later we came back and found out she had a severe double ear infection and eye infection so she ended up on antibiotics too.
Flash forward to Thursday night - she started coughing, but it never woke her up long enough to give her an inhaler puff. Friday morning she sounded a little wheezy so I used her inhaler before sending her off to daycare because she generally seemed fine. Daycare called at the end of the day saying she was having trouble breathing, and was a mess when Justin picked her up (of course this was right when our Dr.'s office closed for the night). So I called the nurses' line and was eventually told by the on-call pediatrician to take her to the ER a little after 8:00. Justin was at a debate so he had to meet us there when it was done.
In the ER, the triage nurse said she didn't think she was in breathing distress and gave her Tylenol for a mild fever so we almost gave up and went home. But we waited for 2 and a half hours before being taken back to be seen. The ER doc was really concerned and said she may need to be admitted for a few days and ordered a chest x-ray, IV antibiotics, steroids, nasal swab test, and breathing treatment. The IV was AWFUL. She has such tiny veins and enough chub that the nurses poked her arm and then hand and still couldn't find a good vein. The charge nurse was called in and was successful (but poor Lena had to be poked 3 times).
Meanwhile we just waited behind the curtain for the next round of torture to Lena while she dozed off in my arms. Just like and episode of the show "ER" there was a mentally altered man in the next curtain who moaned in pain, vomited, screamed that a swarm of bees was attacking him, yelled racial slurs, etc. I have watched way too many episodes of ER because usually that is the guy that goes nuts and starts throwing the trays and carts and attacking people. Thankfully we were out of there before we found out if that happened.
We got a bed in the baby ward around 4am and Justin went home to relieve my mom who came over to put Eli to bed and wait for us. Unfortunately we had to share a small room with a sick 2month old and his mother. Lena screamed through all of the admittance procedures (vitals, etc) but went to sleep and kept rolling over and cutting off her IV and making it beep. She woke up at 6:15, freaked out about the cage-like hospital crib, so I rescued her and let her lay with me for an hour or so until she just started talking and laughing and trying to run around, tethered to her IV pole. Lena is just loud, constantly moving around and talking and banging and knocking things over, so our poor neighbors were probably not happy, and I was unsuccessfully doing everything I could to keep her quiet. Our regular pediatrician came to check her out in the morning and said she seemed to be much better and we could go home at the end of the day as long she did ok during the day in the hospital and we had to come to the office the next morning for a follow-up. She was diagnosed with Restricted Airway Disease, or something like that. Basically, if it keeps happening it will be officially labeled asthma. Hopefully this is the end of it though.
After a day of playing on the fold-out bed-chair and wandering the short hallway and trying (but mostly failing) not to wake up the baby in our room, we were allowed to go home around 6:00. Lena seemed back to normal. This morning while getting ready for the follow-up appoinment she fell off of our bed and landed face-first on Eli's wooden train. Ow. She got a big bump with an oddly-shaped cut.
At her follow-up appointment we found out she is still a little wheezy (to be expected) and also has thrush and an ear infection. She now has 5 different prescriptions to take multiple times a day (inhaler, steroid, antibiotic, antifungal, preventative inhaler). Ugh. To top it off, all 4 canine teeth just broke the gum surface at the same time. You'd never know it though, other than some drooling. Other than complaining sometimes about the medicine and inhaler she is her normal, happy, playful self. Besides a little cough you would never know anything is wrong with her.
I guess making it through 4+ years of parenthood without visiting the hospital was pretty good. As healthy as Lena has been for the first 17 months this has come as a surprise, although I wonder if she has gotten other illnesses but didn't show any symptoms. I was beginning to think we were out of the woods, after surviving her second full winter in daycare relatively unscathed. Lets hope this is the end of it!