Emily's Sick With Croup

WOW...after about a week of cuddling with Emily (which I absolutely LOVED), 4 days after being diagnosed and treated for croup, I noticed that Emily's breathing rate was crazy high. It was Friday evening and Craig and I were getting ready to leave for a birthday day dinner celebrating my dad.  I was getting Emily ready, and I noticed that she was breathing super fast. I decided to count her breaths per minute, and, on average, I counted 50 breathes each minute. Concerned, I called our on-call doctor and he also seemed concerned at her rate. He asked if she was running a fever, and according to our thermometer...she wasn't. The doctor told me to treat it as though she had rapid breathing due to a fever and give her Tylenol. He directed me to count her breaths again, about 30 minutes after administering her Tylenol...if it was still high, he wanted us to take her to Marybrige Children's Hospital.  
I gave Emily her dose of Tylenol, and was confident that her breathing rate would go down in 30 minutes, so...since we were already running late, we continued with our plans of meeting my family for dinner. At the restaurant, after we had ordered our food, we took Emily outside, to a more quiet place, so that we could count her breathes again...no change, she was still breathing at about 50 breathes/minute. Craig and I knew that we were going to have to leave the restaurant and take Emily to the hospital.
  
This is a first for us!! When I went back into the restaurant to gather our belongings and to tell my parents what we needed to do, the tears started to well up in my eyes. I couldn't even say it, they knew exactly what we were doing and why we had to leave. My mom got up and gave me a big hug and told us they would be praying for us all!!

---

When we arrived at the hospital it didn't take long before we were called back to get Emily assessed. Her temperature had risen to 101.3 yet her oxygen levels were good...so that was a relief. They gave us a little gown to put Emily in as we waited for the doctor...for about TWO HOURS!!! Once the doctor came in, she was extremely thorough. She just reassured us that...we brought Emily in because something has us very concerned about her, so she will do whatever she can to bring us peace of mind that all of the I's are dotted and the T's are crossed before sending us home. She told us that with croup, a lot of times kids can get a secondary infection. She listened to her lungs to see if Emily had pneumonia, unfortunately since Emily was crying so loudly it was difficult for her to hear what she was listening for, so she ordered a chest x-ray for Emily.

---

The x-ray process was ridiculous!! I'm told, by my mother, that this new method is a HUGE improvement of what my brother had to go through (literally taping the baby to the table so that they couldn't move), however...to see my baby girl squeezed between the Plexiglas with her arms stuck in a raised position...as she is screaming at the top of her lungs...and mama can't do anything to help her...that was just a feeling that I never want to experience again. When we went back to our room to wait for the results, Emily was out like a light from sheer exhaustion. My poor little girl!! (The baby in this picture isn't Emily...just a stock photo, but I can't believe the baby looks like it is just hanging out. The x-ray technician actually said that he has had baby's fall asleep in there. Emily had the complete opposite reaction)

---

Afterwards, the doctor came in to tell us that her chest x-rays were clear and that she does not have pneumonia, but she wanted to run some blood work on Emily to check for one more type of infection before sending us home. It didn't take long before the IV technicians arrived. We had to wake Emily, who wasn't happy to see new strangers in her room. Craig and I both thought that it was just going to be a little poke on the foot and then they collect the drops of blood into a vial...just as they did when she was a newborn. Well, we were wrong. Her blood draw was just like any ordinary adults blood draw...with a tourniquet and everything. It didn't take long to figure out that the second IV technician was here to hold Emily down...in what looked like a very gentle head lock position *tear*.  Craig even admitted, after that horrible process, that he almost lost it. Meanwhile, I couldn't hold back the tears.
  
Throughout most of this evening, I seriously wanted to call my own mother and ask her to come in for support, but I was honestly repeating in my head, "You ARE the mother Heather!!! You ARE the mother now...you have to be the strong one!!!" I felt like this was a sink of swim sort of test!!!
  
Well, the worst was over!! After waiting for another hour and a half (5 hours total in the ER), the doctor came in with the good report that everything looks great and that she feels very comfortable sending us home. HOLY TOLEDO...If I never have to go through that again, it would be too soon!!! NO THANK YOU!!!

2 comments