Trip to the ER...

I spent last night up off and on with Drake giving him breathing treatments only to end up in the Emergency Room anyway. Around 2:30/3:00 a.m. the treatments and the humidifier and the cold night air just weren't doing the trick anymore. He just couldn't get his breath or stop coughing, and quite frankly he was scaring the hell out of me, so Steve and I got dressed, woke Gage up, and headed to the hospital where they gave him a steroid shot in the leg for a bad case of the Croup. A long drawn out process for just a shot, but it worked and I did learn a couple of new things. 1.) When a child has the Croup you should never give them a cough supressant. It works against the swelling in the vocal cords. (we did not give him any, but it was something I did not know) and 2.) When a child has the Croup, if you have a nebulizer (which we do because of Drake's asthma) you can fill the chamber with water and ice chips and give them a "cool mist" treatment, which is like the same thing as taking them out in the cool night air to constrict the swelling in the vocal cords only you don't have to actually stand outside and freeze. Needless to say, I had to stay home with Drake because by the time we left there he was exhausted and still coughing somewhat. And poor Gage had to abruptly get woken up and endure the whole thing from the stool in the corner of the ER room. He was tired, and I let him stay home with us. I felt bad for him. Steve came home and slept for a couple of hours and headed into work. He's our trooper! The "barky" croup cough has faded into just a bit of a regular cough, and he hasn't had a fever all day now, so we should be back to our normal schedule tomorrow. And, yes, it's true. My kids cannot get a mild case of anything. They go all out, full blown, trip to the ER style! Ugghh!