Croup

Eli came home from school Thursday looking like he was getting sick. I could tell by his eyes and assumed it was another cold. He had a slight fever later and asked to go to bed around 6! He woke up crying and saying his throat hurt. By this time I assumed it was strep and knew we'd head to the doctor in the morning.

He woke up around midnight coughing a lot. I didn't know much about croup but had heard it sounds like a barking seal. Yep, it really does. It was so scary for all of us. He had trouble breathing and was crying which made it worse. His voice had been raspy earlier and with the coughing we could hardly understand him. We turned the shower on hot and sat in the steamy bathroom and that really helped. It seemed all gone once we left the bathroom and the cool house air hit him too. He had some Tylenol since his fever had went up and within 20 minutes he was acting silly again.

This was our first experience with croup and it really is awful. Silas had an appt for shots at 9:30 Friday morning so I called to see if someone in the office could see Eli. We got an appt but it was at 10:50 so we had to hang out at the office for awhile. We didn't eat breakfast so I let him pick out a donut in the coffee shop. He felt so bad he even fell asleep on the bench in the lobby :(

We saw a doctor we'd never seen before and she was great! Croup is viral so she didn't want to just give him antibiotics if it wasn't needed do we decided to just watch him for a few days and see what happens. Especially after knowing how long he was sick before Christmas we thought it might take a while. She thought some of his symptoms were kind of different - he didn't start off with a cold which is typical for croup. Since its a weekend and she was kind of concerned she ended up giving me her cell phone number to call if I had questions!!! Wow! Not many doctors will do that nowadays! And our offices/ hospital have a nurses line to call so this really isn't typical at all. I don't know if I'd even call her but its still nice. She said if he's not better by Monday or Tuesday to call back and they'd call him in an antibiotic.

For now we just hope he gets better soon. He hasn't had too many bad coughing fits but when he does they scare him. We've sat in the steamy bathroom a lot and we hardly got any sleep last night ( I'm pretty sure he got a lot more than me though!). We've also done a few breathing treatments- something we hadn't done in 2 years! This morning he was feeling well enough to get off the couch and actually play! He took a nap later and the fever came back but I'm seeing improvements already! I really hope he isn't sick as long as we was last time!