E.R. round two: Oh, Croup!

I had never been to the hospital until Sawyer's birth.  I had visited about 2 new babies, and saw my dad when he fell on the chainsaw, saw my mom when she had appendicitis, and that was it.  Last night was visit number 3 in the past 7 months.

As I've been posting, we all have colds.  Yesterday when I got home from work Sawyer was starting to breathe really loud in kind of a wheezing fashion.  He was still happy and strong, but his breathing sounded terrible.  The clinic closed in 20 minutes and we'd never make it, so we decided we would go the next morning.  As the night went on it got worse.  We decided to call the on-call doctor around 9 and he said to get a humidifier (if we didnt have one make a tent with a boiling pot of water) and call later if that didnt work. I immediately went to the bathroom and started a hot shower and steamed out the bathroom with Sawyer until Andy got back from Destiny's with her spare humidifier.  He didnt improve.  We put him to sleep down in his room with the humidifier.  Now I had heard of croup, but heard it was when little kids cough like seals and Sawyer wasn't coughing so I didnt think that was the case and didnt think the humidifier would work anyways.

I am going to add here that Andy woke up at 4:30 that morning for work, we both had colds, and I just taken Nyquil and went into bed.

As i was laying in bed i could hear him wheezing in the next room so loud.  He sleeps on his stomach and I was so scared he was going to stop breathing that I was crying and had Andy take him downstairs.  It was like 11:45 by this time and he called the doctor back.  He said to take him down to Good Sam's ER downtown Puyallup because they had a Mary Bridge (the children's hospital in Tacoma owned by the same company) team down there and it was closer to us.

Luckily Andy hadn't taken any Nyquil and we drove down at midnight.  We waited around forever as usual for the ER, and finally got checked by the nurse.  He had a 99.something temperature, but he had recently had Tylenol because he was warm, so his temp probably would have been worse.  They took us to the most awful place.  It was like 6 beds lined up with ER patients and only divided by curtains so we could hear everyone else.  At mary bridge we all had our own big rooms in the ER with big spaces to sit and lay down.  Me and Andy had to squish onto the bed and hold Sawyer.  I think this was because they are doing construction on the hospital and hopefully the new ER is a lot bigger with that huge new building!

They brought us a nebulizer to hold in front of Sawyer's face so that the smoke stuff went in his face to breathe in.  We held it there until the smoke stuff disappeared.  They thought he might have croup and he got a shot of steroids to make whatever inflamation causes croup to go down. They said something about the amout of drool and that he might have croup so maybe that explains all the drool he's had this past week?

After more waiting we went to go get X-rays to make sure he didnt have anything more serious. We all got to put on little lead smocks.  Sawyer got an 80's looking one that he made puddles of drool on.  Then he threw up on the floor lol.  The X-rays confirmed the inflammation by the voice box as croup, and his lungs looked good (thank goodness!)

The nebulizer causes immediate relief, so we had to go back to that awful place and squish on the bed and wait to see if he got worse after it wore off.  Hospital rules was waiting 6 hours, but our doctor said he always cuts it in half lucky for us.  He said if he got wheezy again we would have to be admitted to the hospital.  They had to put that red light on his toe again, but this time he is more coordinated and pulled it off (along with his hospital bracelet almost immediately).

Andy went and got a chair and I laid down on the bed with Sawyer in my arms about 3:30am.  We all fell asleep finally, and at 4:30 they came and woke us up telling us we were ok to leave.  Sawyer sounded so much better but we were so exhausted we went home and Sawyer woke up to eat at 10, but then he and Andy went to bed and we all woke up again at 12:30.  We all needed the sleep so bad- me and Andy were zombies with him not having slept in 24 hours with a cold and my with my Nyquil and cold.

They told us to come back if he gets wheezy again because it can get serious (a friend told us they stopped breathing as a baby when they had croup) but hopefully that steroid shot fixes him up and we won't have to return to a hospital until a baby is born!