Colds, Coughs, Conjunctivitis, OH MY!

Rosalie has had a rough month! It started only 2 days after her birthday in February as just a mild cold. After a few days, her symptoms began to go away and all seemed to be well. A couple days after that all of her cold symptoms returned, but it was a bit worse. She was much more congested it and it seemed to be more like sinusitis than a cold. It just kept holding on ... I kept giving her immune boosting supplements, kept her home, and tried to have her rest as much as possible. When it finally seemed as though she was getting a little better ... her eyes started running and were terribly goopy. It was a very mucusy discharge coming from her eyes. Her eyelids and skin underneath her eyes was dark red and swollen. She was miserable. I spent most of the week sitting on the couch holding her. (that topic is a whole other blog post! Let's just say, I am not very good at sitting still!) We put a few drops of colloidal silver in her eyes and put warm compresses on her eyes several times a day. It just seemed to get worse each day instead of better. This is where I must make a confession. You may think that I am very confident in my homeopathic remedies. The truth is I am a basket case when my children get sick. I am not confident and I panic ... a lot. I don't panic with colds, sore throats, and fevers. I do panic when it comes to the unfamiliar. I have never dealt with conjunctivitis before, so I had a very nervous week. In fact, on day 4 of this ordeal, I was at a loss and ready to take her to the pediatrician. Rich helped ground me, though. I am not anti-doctors ... I am thankful for modern medicine and all that it provides! I am generally more comfortable with doing all that I can to treat things at home first. One of the things that bothers me about taking a sick child to the doctor ... is all the things to which I am exposing my already immune compromised child at the doctor's office!

You can see in the pictures how swollen and red her eyes were!  Her conjunctivitis was clearly following the pattern for viral conjunctivitis. So, what could a pediatrician do, anyway? If I had taken her to the doctor, he may or may not have prescribed antibiotic ointment ... but he would have had to admit that he didn't really know if it was viral or bacterial. The only way to know that is to culture the eye discharge. I wouldn't have considered treating the conjunctivitis with antibiotics unless it could be determined 100% that it was bacterial ... and even then, I'd probably try to treat it naturally.
So, what did we do?
I mentioned that we used colloidal silver drops in her eyes...and warm compresses. I didn't see much improvement with that, though. We made a solution of warm filtered water and sea salt and began putting drops in her eyes 3 times a day. We almost immediately saw results! Her eyes began to clear up within 12 hours of starting the drops!
Now, I will most certainly panic over other health issues that we face in the future, but at least now I can face conjunctivitis without fear!