Are You Going to Poke Me?

We had a bit of an adventure yesterday morning.  Loofa was sounding pretty croupy Sunday night, but he sounded better during the day Monday.  Tuesday night his breathing dramatically worsened.  I pulled out the humidifier, but that wasn't helping.  J took him into the bathroom to give him a steam treatment from the shower while I called the on call service.  She had me take him outside for a few minutes, but when that didn't help she said to take him to the ER.  Luckily we have a hospital just a few blocks away.  It is small so it doesn't take long to get checked in and into a room.  His breathing sounded a little better by the time we got there, but it was still bad enough to need some treatment.  Loofa was pretty interested in what was going on and asked a million questions.  First they gave him a breathing treatment, adrenaline to open up his airway a bit.  Then he had to give some blood so they could test his white blood count.  He did not care for that.  He does great with his immunizations, but this took quite a bit longer.  To add insult to injury, they followed the blood draw with an enormous shot of steroids in his bum.  That one really upset him.  It took him awhile to calm down from that because it made him uncomfortable to sit.  They gave him a teddy bear to make him happy, but he could have cared less about it.  This is the second teddy bear he has received at an ER.  He'll probably have quite a collection by the time he is 12.  The nurse brought him gatorade at one point and that cheered him up more than the bear.  After the shot he rode in a wheelchair over to get a chest x-ray.  I wish I had my camera for all this stuff.  The xray was pretty simple, but he was still periodically upset from the shot so it took a bit to calm him down so he would hold still.  After the xray they moved us to another room with a tv since it was going to be a while longer.  J had to get the kids ready for school while all this was going on.  At one point when I was talking to him, he told me that it was snowing outside.  There was an inch of snow out there when I opened the window.  It was pretty slick too from some freezing rain.  J slid a bit on one turn and drove up a curb.  Luckily he just bumped a sign a little bit.  Meanwhile, poor Loofa had to get two more shots in the bum, the antibiotic this time.  These ones were huge as well, no quick pokes.  The nurse brought him his favorite cereal after the shots.  Once he finished he was ready to go home.  We had to wait 1/2 an hour after the antibiotics were given before we could leave.  Loofa fell asleep on me the last 15 minutes.  I don't think he had much sleep during the night so he was pretty exhausted, especially since the adrenaline had worn off at that point.  I was glad to hear his breathing normalized.

Last night Fefe's breathing started sounding pretty labored.  It wasn't quite as bad as Loofa's, but I was still worried.

Today he had a followup appt with the pediatrician and she was really happy with how well Loofa was doing.  He asked her if she was going to poke him, he's pretty paranoid about that now.  We were able to discontinue his amoxicillin because his ear infection was completely gone.  HOWEVER, I mentioned to the Dr. how badly Fefe had been breathing the previous night.  She had us check her in so that she could check her out.  Turns out her croup is bad enough that she has to have three days of steroids and she has an ear infection so gets to use the rest of Loofa's amoxicillin.  I was relieved the doctor took it seriously enough.  I have to sleep in her room tonight to keep an eye on her, but hopefully the steroids will keep it from getting too bad.  

I always think of Anne of Green Gables when I think of croup because of the one chapter where she has to help the family with croupy kids.  I'm so thankful for modern medicine that takes this from a life threatening situation to a minor hiccup.

One word to the wise, ibuprofen is pretty good for croup because it relieves the inflammation in the throat. I found out also that there are specific viruses that actually cause croup (most likely parainfluenza in this case).  I had always thought it was just a tendency.  Some kids can be more prone to it, but kids under 5 are more likely to develop it because of their small airways.  The dr. said that Ephant's cold was the same virus, but since she was older it just gave her laryngitis instead of croup.