Croup: Season 4, Rounds 7, 7.1 & 7.2

This silly suitcase-sitting little boy of ours sufficiently scared his mama last night.

Dan and I had literally been home from date night last night for 3 minutes when we heard the good ol' Elijah stridor (thank goodness for our timing). We gave him an epi neb, but the croup was not much better, which is highly unusual for him. Dan sat outside in the cold air with him for a bit, and it was still pretty bad. He was also shaking uncontrollably, which is something we have never seen before. He always gets the racing heart and he gets a little bit jittery, but the shaking freaked me out. I grabbed my keys and asked Dan to help me get him into the car. It was a little bit too scary for my comfort, so E and I headed to the hospital down the road from us (non-Children's).

By the time we got there he was sounding a tiny bit better, but he was still croupy. We snuggled on a bed together and Elijah fell asleep resting on me. He began snoring very loudly, so I woke him up to get him to cough. The croup was back with a vengeance! It was super scary. I pressed the nurse button and asked for immediate help. I have to say here that this really is a great hospital, but it is no Children's. I found myself beating myself up a bit through the rest of the night for not taking the time to drive there in the first place. 

Elijah sufficiently freaked everybody out with his crazy stridor and low sats. The doctor gave him some oxygen and that helped a little bit. It was bad enough that he had to receive another epi neb, which caused him to do more shaking and then he began vomiting. That was a scary 20 minutes! Once the neb started working, the doctor decided we needed to spend the night. I was half hoping they would send us to Children's, but we stayed put.

We got moved to a room and Elijah had a very loud nurse who didn't want to stop talking (at 1am). We finally fell asleep around 1:30 and I woke up every 20 minutes or so to listen to E's breathing. His sats looked pretty good through the night, and he still sounded croupy but was sounding much better.

At 4:00 he was starting to sound very croupy again, but I had talked him into remaining CALM (something he was not able to do the previous two times) so the RT wasn't convinced he needed another neb. I knew he would be back! Sure enough, 2 hours later Elijah woke up with even worse stridor than the previous night! Frustrating and so scary! So we gave him his third neb of the night and his second dose of oral steroids. After this it was morning, so croup said good-bye to us (good riddance).

Getting discharged was an ordeal (like I said, not Children's), but we are just thankful for good medical care and most importantly that our boy is safe. There were a few moments last night that produced genuine fear in me. It was not fun times.

E will be taking a 5-day course of oral steroids to knock this junk out. He has a cough and sounds congested, but otherwise is seeming just fine. We all took a huge nap today and we all plan to go to bed early tonight! Please pray that our boy's body heals and that we have a few nights of peace. Thank you for checking in. If you have an extra spot in your prayer list tonight, pray that my friend Sue recovers well from her surgery today! Thank you!!