This has been such a great week, not.

[naomikritzer]

So Kiera hurt her foot on Friday, and we went to the doctor on Saturday; I posted about that already. Then on Tuesday, we came home from preschool and Molly curled up into a miserable little heap on the couch and fell asleep. We roused her at dinnertime, but she didn't want any. She did revive enough to request popsicles and Jell-O (our sick child staples) and Little House in the Big Woods read aloud. She went to bed, then woke up at 10:30 p.m. vomiting. Ed and I stripped her bed and cleaned her up, gave her new sheets, and tucked her back in. Ed ran laundry. I nursed Kiera, who had woken up from all the activity in the room and wanted to nurse before going back to sleep.

Molly was sick all day Wednesday, though without anymore vomiting. (An odd fact about Molly: you can tell she's feeling better when she starts admitting that she's sick. When she was really feeling awful, Tuesday night, she would whimper that she was fine when asked how she was feeling.) She wasn't really energetic enough to play, but she was energetic enough to amuse herself by antagonizing Kiera.

Wednesday night, Molly was feeling better, but Kiera developed a croupy cough, which was markedly worse on Thursday morning. As is almost always the case when one of my kids has croup, I was convinced I could hear wheezing, and made a doctor appointment. It was croup, of course, and they prescribed steamy bathrooms and cold outside air, as always. (The doctor also suggested Motrin to reduce the inflammation of the airway, and checked out Kiera's still-hurting foot. She thinks it's a soft tissue injury, as the buckle fracture the radiologist thought he saw was not where Kiera says it hurts.)

Thursday evening, we had out-of-town friends over for dinner, which was actually very nice. Today Kiera had a phlegmy nasty-sounding cough, but I'll take that over croup, I think, unless it gets worse, in which case I will start thinking that maybe she has pneumonia and go back to the doctor (she's running a very low fever).

Comments

[naomikritzer]

My understanding of croup is that it's kind of comparable to laryngitis -- it's one possible result of having a cold, rather than being a stand-alone disease with its own germ. Grownups do not get croup -- it's a toddler and baby thing (and maybe some preschoolers still get it, I don't know). The larynx swells up and causes this cough that sounds like a seal barking. Sometimes the child also experiences stridor, which is difficulty breathing and can sound like wheezing even though the lungs are completely clear. Most of the time, croup is not a big deal and should be treated at home. The common home remedies are taking your kid into a steamy bathroom, and taking them outside. However, stridor can get so bad that an ER trip is warranted (or urgently required) and you can't necessarily know in advance, when you start hearing that barky cough, whether your kid is going to turn blue and have to go to the hospital, which makes the whole thing ever so much more fun and causes lots of freaked-out trips to the doctor where all that happens is they pat you on the hand and sympathize and send you home with an instruction sheet suggesting steamy bathrooms and trips outside. *sigh*. They can prescribe steroids for it in extreme cases but since steroids have all sorts of side effects of their own they have never offered them to me. Even more than other pediatric illnesses, I swear croup clears up dramatically once you're in the doctor's office. Because exposure to cold air can reduce the inflammation of the airway and take care of the problem, and to get to the doctor's office you have to go outside and ride in the cold car, soooooooooo.........

I hate croup.

[allochthon.livejournal.com]

I'm so sorry the kidlets are sick, and that the week sucked. =(
*hugs*

[mrswebchik.livejournal.com]

Sorry you had such a lousy week. I've had to deal with croup with all 3 of my kids. Of course, they never want to sit with you in the steamy bathroom. And when they cough, it freaks them out and they start crying harder, which makes them cough more, and makes daddies who don't know better get really worried. I'm just glad the house we're in now doesn't have heat vents in the bedrooms (85yo house). Since the rooms are much cooler, I haven't had to deal with the croup as much as I did in other places. And the kids seem to sleep better.

I hope the cough is just a cough (I'm getting over the same thing right now) and no more trips to the doctor's office are needed.