croup

Saturday, Hubs and I left our kids with my parents and headed to the Temple for our Stake Temple Day. We had to leave about 7:30am to make it to a 10am session. When we left I hadn't heard Mac cough at all.

My parents said that not long after we left that Mac started coughing and the cough was sounding worse as time went by. His cough ended up sounding like a barking seal. But he was acting fine. He ate lunch and went and layed down on the couch and fell asleep.

We got out of the Temple around 1pm, and I called my mom to see how the kids were doing. She said that they were doing just fine and Mac was asleep and Oak was about to go down for a nap. Then we headed over to the Deseret Book Store and then we were going to go to lunch with Hubs's parents. While in the bookstore, I got a call from my (it was only about 10  minutes after I just talked to her). She didn't sound panicked, but very worried, and i knew something was wrong.

She told me that Mac had woken up gasping for air and he couldn't breath. I could hear him in the background gasping and trying to tell Grandma that he couldn't breathe. All I wanted to do, was reach through the phone and help him. I was starting to get panicked, because I was feeling very helpless and we were nearly 2 hours away from him. As I was telling my Mother-in-law, who was with us, what was going on, she said that it sounded like croup. She said that when her kids were little and had croup, the doctor told her to take them outside. His breathing wasn't getting better at all so that is what I told my mom to do with him and that they needed to call 911. My dad called 911 and took him outside and he immediately started doing better.

Mean while we left the stuff at the bookstore that we were planning on buying and left for home immediately. We had to stop and get gas, which did not help my anxiety, but we would not have made it back to our boy with out getting any.

 The ambulance arrived shortly after that and all I could do was listen over the phone while all this was going on. The  Paramedics did their routine stuff on him and I ended up talking a little to one of the paramedics who said that he thought that it was croup. And that they were going to transport him to the Emergency Room/Urgent Care (which was more than 30 minutes away in a neighboring town). I told them that was fine (although in my head I was thinking about how much ambulance rides cost, but knew that I shouldn't worry about that).

My Dad was able to go with Mac in the ambulance and Mac sat on his lap the whole time while my Dad held oxygen up to his face. Mac was pretty disappointed that they didn't turn the siren on when he rode in it. But he still thought that it was so cool.

We then arrived to the hospital a little while after they had gotten there. My dad had already given as much info to the triage nurse as he could. And when we walked in to the waiting room, Mac was sitting next to his grandpa coloring in a little coloring book they had given him. He was very excited to see us, and us him. He sounded so raspy, but talked our heads off. We waited with them for another 30 minutes before they took us back to a room, then waited another 45 minutes before the doctor came in. The doctor came in for about 5 minutes and told us that, yes, it was croup. The advice he gave us was to take hi him outside if that happens again. And that it is classic for croup to come on that quickly. They gave him an oral steroid and then we were off.

Mac did not shut his mouth and was a little bit crazy the 30 minute drive back to my parents house. I was told that is because of the steroid. He was a bit off the wall yesterday too. It was nearly impossible to get him to calm down enough so that he wasn't panting and out of breathe. By the end of the night last night he was very wheezy and so we filled the bathroom with steam from the hot shower and then made him go outside for a little while. He slept great last night and is doing much better today, and thankfully a little less wild.

We are really hoping that all Oak will get is a cold out of it and not get full blown croup, since croup is basically a cold gone bad. She has started a bit of a runny nose, so we will see. But at least we now know the symptoms and what to do.

I am trying to recover from little to no sleep the last couple of nights so that I can get my talk written for this coming Sunday.