Croup - Not Welcome at Our House

I sit down to blog about this adventure, and I feel like writing, "I don't want to talk about it."
Still, for the sake of a journal, I will give the effort. It's going to be too detailed for most of you. I don't care if you don't read it.

Monday morning Ryan developed a dry little cough. Some virus, oh well. After the kids woke up from their naps at about 3:00, it was definitely still present, but not bad. We drove out to Anaheim to spend a few hours with Jana and her kids at the hotel they are staying in while going to Disneyland for the next 4 days. We snacked, went swimming, had a fun time. I left for about an hour to take care of a Disneyland errand, and when I got back, I noticed that his cough was a little worse. Oh well, last I checked, I can't fix a cough. We went to Sonic for dinner and he was getting pretty whiny and didn't eat any of his food. He begged me to take him home so we left - it was about 8:00pm.

As we were driving on the freeway, he would cough, cry, cough, cry, gasp, cough, cry, etc. I thought to myself, "I guess I'll take him to the doctor in the morning and see if there is something they can recommend for this cough. Boy, none of us are going to get any sleep tonight, etc." Then I realized that the Walk-in Clinic was open until 9pm. Maybe they could give him something tonight - heck it was the same co-pay and all. So, I impulsively got onto a different freeway and headed toward the clinic. Honestly, I'm not one to take my kids to the doctor over every sniffle, so I didn't see much logical reason to take him. Still, I went.

Croup. By about 9:00 he was barking pretty badly and gasping for air. I could tell it was pretty hard for him to breathe. Both of my kids were getting pretty tired and cranky. The nurse told me I should've brought him in earlier. What the heck? It was just a dumb little cough until a hour before. They had me give him a breathing treatment which he was hysterical about. He kept turning his head and screaming about how much he hated it, etc. They gave him an oral dose of steroids to open up his airway. After the breathing treatment was done, the doctor told me that I had to take him to the ER because their facility didn't have the medicine that Ryan needed. The steroids would work, but not for another 6-8 hours. Thanks.

By this time, It's 9:30 and Ryan is crying, Katie is getting tired and wants me to hold her. I manage to get them to the car and call Derek. He's got to find a way to meet us at the hospital. He was at work with just his bike. Luckily, we have a great home teacher who picked him up and drove him over to the hospital to meet us.

In the meantime, I have 2 kids in a PACKED Emergency Room and they are both crying for me to hold them. I was standing in line to sign Ryan in so there I was, a woman 7.5 months pregnant, tired as you can imagine, holding my 38 pound 4 year old in one arm, and my 23 pound 2 year old in the other - both of them pretty upset. Bless the nurse who opened a door out of nowhere and asked, "Who's that barking out here?" She carried Ryan in for me (this is the part where I started to cry) and put him on a bed. They hooked up 3 little electrodes on him and a mixture of 4 or 5 nurses and doctors were in messing with him in one way or another. Someone was trying to take his temperature, someone else is asking him questions, all the while, he's FREAKING out. He's trying to get up from the bed, bury his face in it, climb on my lap (I'm trying to keep Katie from getting too scared too), gasping for breath, hacking away. I hated it so much. The nurse gives ME the job of getting his temperature. I'm supposed to get an oral temperature on a kid who can hardly breathe (because he's so worked up) and is coughing 20 times a minute? Didn't happen. He's screaming for me to take him home, trying to rip off the cords/electrodes attached to him, "I don't want any more people," etc.

Finally, most doctors left and we just had a nurse come in who started another breathing treatment. Ryan was totally unreasonable about the FIRST breathing treatment, now I'm trying to convince him to sit still and calm down during another one. He was so out of control. All he was supposed to do was sit and breathe. He was more relaxed when he had to get stitches. THEN, my husband walked in the door.

To make a long story a little shorter, our home teacher stayed and helped Derek give Ryan a blessing, and then afterwards he took Katie to his house so she could get some rest. They did a chest x-ray on Ryan, gave him a shot in the hiney of the steroid that he needed, and had us continue the breathing treatments for as long as he'd tolerate them. He relaxed enough to fall asleep at one point, but when we started another treatment while he was sleeping he woke up and got upset again. They moved us to a different room and gave him a teddy bear and blanket and he finally was able to rest at about midnight. His breathing seemed almost normal while he was relaxed so they told us we could take him home. During the night he did pretty well. At one point he woke up and started coughing again and I told him that he needed to calm his body down or else we'd have to go back to the hospital. He was silent after that and went right back to sleep.

I pretty much refuse to ever do that again. I never felt super worried about Ryan, but it was emotionally very stressful. I'm just glad that I have a great husband and a helpful home teacher. Croup, don't rear your ugly head at our house again. You're not welcome.