Nurse's Note: Oh, So That's Croup

There's a tree on our street that always seems to get into the Autumn Spirit early, and I don't blame it.  It's quite the actress (of course it's a girl!) and really puts on quite a show!  Just a couple days into October we saw the first hint of yellow in its leaves, and for the last few weeks we've watched it change from yellow, to orange, to red.  In fact, all of Ohio has become something like a painting.  It's really been just dreamy!

On a less dreamy note, I guess Fall decided it didn't want to come without a buddy.  That's kind of lonely.  So along with all the dazzling colors, this year the first week of October brought us some Croup!

It was terrible.

Tim actually diagnosed the girls.  The smarty pants.  He had just finished learning about croup.  And I actually remembered a few random things about it and had seen some croupy kids during my crash-course in pediatrics way back in nursing school. So we kind of had an idea of what was coming. We knew it was viral, knew it was miserable, knew a few basic treatment tips that might help a little, but knew that we were mostly going to have to tough it out.  Sometimes it does help to know a little, so I thought we were pretty prepared.  Bring on the bad nights, high fevers, and sick, sad babies, we are ready! Right?

Wrong!   

I sure did not realize that croup could be so bad!  It was rough!

Both girls got it, but McKenna got it first and had it the worst.  On her Croup night #2 she spiked some pretty scary fevers and ended up spending some time in the emergency room.  Well two emergency rooms actually.  She didn't turn around like they thought she would at the first hospital, so the little sweetie got an ambulance ride to the Children's hospital and spent a few hours there too.  Poor thing.  Not our best night.

Brinlee started in with her round of it the very next night.  And from there, they spent a good solid week in and out of fevers, coughing like crazy, sitting up at night next to open windows, trying to choke down fluids over a raw, scratchy throat, soaking in hot baths, and crying... a lot.  It's enough to break a poor mama's heart! 

These babies really were troopers though.  They both completely lost their little voices, and were obviously about as miserable and exhausted as two little people can be.  But they stayed just as sweet as ever and toughed it out like champions.  They are so awesome.

Once things had settled some, I did feel a little sheepish for getting so frazzled.  A hospital visit?  Hmm.  I mean, we do have a decent medical background, and it was "just croup"... but I didn't feel sheepish for long.  As it turns out Croup is a bummer of a bug! And apparently not as textbook as we thought.  We were glad we decided to go with our gut on this one.  I just hope that we can say this was our lesson in Croup, and we can now log it away for safe keeping and never re-visit it again, ever.  I don't think that's too much to ask, do you?

Here's hoping!