A First For Everything

On Wednesday night, I awoke to the sound of Grace coughing. It was a weird cough. Not like a chest cold cough or bronchitis. It didn't sit well with me or my husband and we were even more concerned in the morning. It sounded like a barking seal had taken up residence in Grace's room. The barking cough is generally a sign of croup though I can honestly say I've never heard it before. After dilly dallying for some bit, I decided to call the doctor. If it was croup, it's a virus and there's nothing you can really do about it. But I was concerned so off we went to our favorite pediatrician.

Grace immediately clams up when she sees the pediatrician. It's no wonder considering he's the guy who gives her the needles. But, the guy has experience, and when he saw Grace's reaction, entered the room backwards so she wouldn't have to look at him. It at least made me laugh. Grace did in fact have croup but not a bad case. We went over the warning signs and he explained croup can go either way. Either she'd be well on the way to feeling better by the evening, or she'd be going downhill. We left with Grace in a good mood. She even gave the doctor a high five and showed him every detail of her new spring jacket. She concluded with a little "byeee" and off we went. I wasn't too concerned.

I got Grace down for a nap and finally sat down after a crazy day. Then I heard her stirring from her nap but she was crying increasingly harder. I ran up and she couldn't catch her breath. I tried to calm her down but nothing was working. She sounded worse and worse--like a seriously apoplectic, barking seal. I did as the doctor told me and ran a hot shower but had no luck. After 15 minutes of her hysterics, gasping for breath, and increasingly gray complexion, I made the call. We were off to the ER.

Making the call to go to the emergency room is scary. You don't want to be an overreactive parent but you also don't want to kick yourself for not pulling the trigger sooner. Later last night my husband and I concurred--if you think you maybe should go to the ER, you probably should. So I called my husband at work and said to meet us at the hospital. Thankfully, the best hospital in the area is a 5 minute drive though I think I made it in two. Dad made it within 15 minutes of us getting there.

They saw us within 10 minutes but by this time Grace had calmed down. All their poking and prodding though got her fired up again and she repeated what she had done with me. While not happy to have her go through this again, I was glad the doctor could see what I was talking about it. They gave Grace a giant steroid injection to control the inflammation in her chest/throat. While that was terrible, she rebounded pretty quickly and enjoyed checking out the hospital equipment, wiggling out of her gown, and making calls on our cell phones.

By bedtime, she was doing much better and slept through just fine. Today she's cranky but that's better than sounding like a barking seal. I've been wondering when our first trip to the ER would come. It's inevitable as they get bigger, become more daring, and exposed to more stuff. I would have given my right arm to get some stitches or a cut cleaned out. The breathing thing is scary. Really scary. Thankfully I'm blonde because I'm sure there's a few grays in there today.