Croup de jour

We have been busy in our house...making sure that the local emergency room knows how to handle situations where children are in repiratory distress from the croup. This comes at just the right time of the year, the changing of the gaurds...ie the new residents all start on July 1...I make it a habit to stay away from hospitals in July...no offense to the newbies, I just don't want to deal with them...this year, I broke that cardinal rule of mine. Oh well!

We have to start a couple of weeks ago for you to appreciate my situation. We had been diagnosed with strep three weeks ago, went on medication, the next day after the diagnosis we went into the hosptal for new ear tubes. After ten days of antibiotics, I took her back in last wednesday for a recheck to be sure the strep was gone. Then on thursday I had my yearly well check with the local Down Syndrome center ( I have to follow up with cardio now...that's another story). So on Friday when she developed a fever I thought maybe she still had strep. The rapid came back negative and the overnight I found out on friday was negative. So I just watched her. By Friday afternoon she had a croupy cough, and was miserable.

No big deal, right, just the croup? Well, Saterday morning she could barely breath. She was working so hard to get air...I thought that once she was upright for a while it would go away...maybe a steam bath would help. Yeah, right. By 11 o'clock she was taking breathing breaks from her activity...playing then stopping to lay down and breath...I felt so bad at that point I took her into the ER. We spent the afternoon there, getting Vapos and Decadron shots...finally she sounded better then she had when we had arrived that they let us go home.

But wait! We didn't sleep too hot saterday night, and ended up back in the ER Sunday night, once more struggling to breathe. THis time we got or Vapo, humidified O2 and were admitted overnight. THat was fun! I find great humor in this overnight admission. We had come into the ER at 10: 15pm, we made the decision to keep us overnight at 1am....we found a room and got into a room by 3 am....by the time we had the nurses in to do vitals, the floors docs to do an initial eval, and the docs for my medical practice come thru it was 5: 15 am. HAHAHA! I thought, we will be discharged with morning rounds at 7 am...ok, they rounded on us at 10am, were discharged after another shot of Decadron, which by the time we got the shot and signed our discharge papers, it was 11:30 am.

By the time I got to bed last night and fell alsleep, I had been up awake for over 40 hours. I realize now how these doctors do it...after a certain point you are soo tired you work on overdrive.

No tonight, I plan on going to bed nucie and early with no distractions, no interruptions.

Oh, did I mention my James woke up this morning with a croupy cough?

Hmmmm...I wonder if all the other new residents know what to do with croup? I think I will leave it to someone else to test them out. For now I have had my fill of doctors and hospitals...

ooops, I almost forgot I have a Cardiology appointment this afternoon at the hospital...YIKES!

I need a vacation!