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Last night was spent far from where we’d like, in a nondescript emergency room at WakeMed. Those of you who haven’t experienced the joys of croup in your child simply don’t know what you’re missing. From the action packed coughing fits to the edge-of-your-seat gasping for breath it’s a non-stop roller coaster of fun.
Right around 11:15 as we were turning in we heard Julia start coughing. This is not an unusual occurrence — unwelcome, certainly — and we fully expected it to trail off and have her happily asleep again in no time. That wasn’t to be. It progressed to the full-on, barking tone of horror parents hate to hear. And it just wouldn’t stop. We took her into the bathroom and cranked up the hot water to get a steam room going for her and it alleviated the coughing a bit, but not fully. Cat tried to lay down with her but Julia started right up again just as bad as before, this time with the added bonus of labored breathing.
We took her outside to try to get the cool air to help and that alleviated it some too, but she still had bouts of coughing. At this point I was on the phone with the helpful 24-hour nurse line from my insurance carrier. “Helpful.” Let’s define that.
help·ful (adj.) - Reading from a script and telling a worried parent nothing he didn’t already know.
Who would have thought? By that definition they were certainly helpful. We did another loop outside and Cat had a try at calling our pediatrician’s on-call nurse. That nurse heard Julia in the background — we had come inside by that point and I was trying to give Julia a Popsicle thinking the cold might help the swollen throat tissues — and said “yeah, go ahead and take her in to the emergency room.” The fact that it was now about 1:45 and this had been going on for a little over 2 and a half hours probably was a mitigating factor.
To speed things up a bit, I’ll skip around through the ordeal at the emergency room. She hates doctor’s with a cold, precise passion possibly because of all the needles so checking in with the triage nurse was painful. By this time during the drive over she had settled down some, of course. But following the triage nurse and the subsequent crying and yowling she was coughing again in the lobby. They took us into a room where a very nice male nurse tried gamely to earn Julia’s trust with stickers and other goodies and by having Aladdin piped in to our room on the TV. The PA’s visits always ended in tears due to some injustice visited upon her — being forcibly held down by Maman and Papa while PA looks down and swabs throat, Papa holding her tight in his arms as PA looks in her ears, etc — and if I never see my daughter in the contraption they use to acquire X-rays of the chests of infants again I’ll die happy. Picture a wheeled, tight-fitting iron maiden sans spikes, where her arms are held straight up in the air. I got the duty of staying with her in my lead overcoat as the X-rays were taken, and the caged-animal look in her eyes, vigorous head-shaking as she expressed the fact that no, she didn’t want to do any more of this, please, her weakly grasping little hands trying to grab for me and the continuous stream of almost-intelligible babble through her sobs as she desperately tried to tell me she wanted out was enough to shake me to my core.
And to boil it all down to the end, I think they feel that we were overreacting. Murphy’s Law dictates that she never coughed in any of the various visitors’ presence. They kept saying things like “at least she hasn’t coughed since she’s been here,” and we had to explain that in the interminable waits between their 2 minute visits she would have little coughing fits here and there. The steps they told us to take were precisely what we had been doing with the addition of Benadryl if she had a runny nose at bedtime. Of course, these were the same steps that ended up in a 3 hour coughing fit last night, so how is that a solution? They offered steroids if we wanted it, but we decided to see if the Benadryl might help. Following a dose of that we headed home where we all tried to sleep. It was now 4:00.
Julia slept through until about 10:45 without hardly moving. Please keep your fingers crossed for us tonight.
Ken Says:March 23rd, 2005 at 2:54 pm
I wonder what the cause is for her coughing. The cat? Could she be allergic? Indoor air problems of another kind?
I wonder if an air cleaner, either HEPA or electronic might help. I believe that the air in hospitals is highly filtered.
Good luck.
ColdForged Says:March 23rd, 2005 at 2:57 pm
Those are simply excellent questions that never occurred to me, but that certainly deserve some thought and investigation. Thanks, Ken.
perlworld Says:March 23rd, 2005 at 3:33 pm
It must be really bad getting to the stage of laboured breathing…I’d be completely freaked out, but glad to hear she slept well when you got back, fingers crossed for this evening
I know what you mean with the coughing though. Our 19mth old has picked up a cold again for the umpteenth time this year. Last night was a coughing madness, literally every 5 seconds.
There just seems nothing can sort it, medicine, propped up mattress, etc.
You have any helpful tips?
cat Says:March 23rd, 2005 at 4:23 pm
as a gal who had almost every childhood disease and then some.. i have all crossable crossables crossed for you. your poor daughter. how old is she? (it’s possible you’ve mentioned this in earlier posts, but i am rather new to your blog and haven’t had a time to get through everything yet!
) i had croup, i think i drove my parents crazy with my illnesses. oops!
good luck for tonight!!
ColdForged Says:March 23rd, 2005 at 4:29 pm
Many thanks cat and much appreciated. She’s just under 23 months old now.
As an update to the situation, Cat and Julia just got out of the pediatricians’ office from the follow-up visit. Rule #1: emergency room PAs don’t know babies… she has an ear infection in both ears. Yes, he checked last night and pronounced them “fine.” The peds think that she’s in a cycle of moisture behind ears that can’t clear and coughs that, especially at night, tend to put more moisture there. Couple that with an apparently sensitive laryngeal opening that gets irritated and inflamed easily and you wind up where we were last night.
They’ve prescribed a more stout cough suppressant that also contains an antihistamine to dry her up and help her sleep. Oh please let it help!
Shawn Grimes Says:March 23rd, 2005 at 10:46 pm
Man, I tell you what, when it rains it pours. The X-ray contraption you speak of is an absolute nightmare, my feelings pretty much mirror exactly what you said as far as that is concerned.
I hope the new medicine helps and you all get some much needed rest.
Our prayers are with you all. Good luck.
AdamStac Says:March 24th, 2005 at 7:42 pm
My lord I can only imagine your nights! I haven’t been in those shoes yet, and between this post and Shawns, I am learning what to do in a crisis. Ear infections are awful to deal with, I hope that new cough suppressant helps her get well and get some sleep. I imagine she’s pretty cranky from the lack of comfortable sleep. All the best CF!
ColdForged Says:March 25th, 2005 at 12:05 pm
Gah, perlworld, your comment got blacklisted
. I haven’t combed through for false-positives in a while, so it came as a surprise. Sorry about that!
Thanks for the kind words and encouragement everyone. As you can tell from the front page we had a far better night last night, so your good thoughts obviously helped
.
To be honest I have none. I truly wish I did, but sometimes there seems to be no way to get on top of it. It’s a frustrating situation, I know. What I will say is that the current wisdom seems to suggest that the steamy bathroom may not be the best thing and may worsen the problem. Cold things — outside air if it’s cold out, standing in front of the open freezer, cold water from a sippy cup, Popsicles, etc — seem to help the most. That and trying to keep calm and keep the baby calm.
Try using a decongestant or antihistamine instead of just a cough suppressant. If there’s goo running down the back of their throat, they’ll be coughing regardless whatever else is going on.
MrhappyGoLucky Says:March 27th, 2005 at 2:30 pm
I actually had this when I was a child, but I was much older, somewhere around 7 - 9 years of age.
Very unpleasant. I hope things get better, I ended up having to stay at the hospital, which for a seven year old is actually a rather fun experience. You know, once I started breathing again.
For a (almost) two year old though?
Again, I hope things have improved and she never has to go through this again.