Croup Sucks

Right before we went to bed last night, after a completely normal and uneventful day, Averi woke up coughing.  I went in to check on her and knew the minute I heard that dry, barking cough that it was croup.  She's had it seriously 4 or 5 times before, but not any this winter and I was hopeful that she had outgrown it.  I was wrong.

There is no cure for croup, just ways to treat the symptoms, and I could list them all off for you without even thinking about it.  So I set up the humidifier in her room and went to bed.

One-thirty must be the magic hour (remember last weekend when she started puking?) because she woke up much, much worse.  Dan got the baby swing back out, which is great for soothing a sick baby and keeping them upright, and we opened the window to let in some cold air.  After holding her for over an hour, she didn't seem to be any better.  Her throat and ribs were sucking in with every breath, along with a very loud, audible gasping.

My goal was just to get her calmed down enough that she could get back to sleep.  Croup is always worse at night and I knew that if I could just soothe her until morning she would be alright.  No relief came.  When she still sounded just as bad at 9:30 this morning, I packed her up and left for the hospital.

I hate how much money this stupid hospital gets from us.  Thinking I could be sneaky, I took her to the Urgent Care instead of the Emergency Department, since it has a much lower copay.

As the nurse walked over to take us back, Averi threw up all over herself.  The nurse and I quickly tried to get her unbuckled from her car seat so that she wouldn't choke.  The nurse was faster than me and scoped Averi up with just enough force to unplug Averi's feeding tube (probably because babies aren't usually attached to tubes by their stomach).  Then we had fluid coming out of two holes, all over Averi's only outfit and blankets.

Once we got things settled down a little, the nurse checked Averi's oxygen level.  It was a whooping 83%.  In case you are wondering, that's supposed to be 100%.  They immediately gave her a breathing treatment of racemic epinephrine (epi) along with some oxygen.  Once her levels were up to 93 (on oxygen) she was transfered to the ED.  I asked the Urgent Care Doctor and he told me not to come back, ever - apparently the ED is the place for us.

Once we got to the ED, Averi was given a steroid to help with the swelling in her throat.  Then she had to be observed for 2-4 hours to make sure that she didn't rebound after the breathing treatment wore off.  They ended up having to give her another epi treatment and finally admitted her to the floor on oxygen around 5:00.

I hope we didn't do any damage keeping her at home last night with her oxygen levels so low.  Croup sucks, but she's never needed oxygen or repeat breathing treatments before so I assumed she would be fine.  Needless to say, we are spending the night at the hospital tonight.