Croup is Crap

Leon’s been having such a hard time lately with the festering cesspool of disease and pestilence daycare. The past few months it seems like he gets over an illness only to get sick again a few days later.

On Thursday morning when I nursed my walking petri dish son, he was making a weird honking sound; sometimes he just needs to cough and doesn’t actually do it until he tries to talk, so I didn’t think much of it, especially since he wasn’t acting weird.

I was wrapping up a meeting at work that morning when I got a call from daycare (shoutout to that moment of dread when you see the school show up on your caller ID). They told me that he had a fever of 100.3, and if it went up 0.3 degrees he’d need to be sent home. We decided to play it by ear since he’s been teething, but I got another call a couple hours later that his temp spiked to 101.4 and he needed to go home to rest. Minh was the real MVP that day and worked from home so I could stay at the office since I’ve already missed work so much lately due to being sick.

Leon seemed fine and was eating well all day on Thursday, so the pediatrician assumed it was an ear infection. But then he woke up at about 10:30 that night with some pretty serious stridor and a fever that we couldn’t get to go down. We brought him to the ER, where they diagnosed him with viral croup. They gave him a dose of steroids and a nebulizer treatment and said they wanted to monitor him for a couple hours to make sure he was reacting positively to the medication.

I laid with Leon on the stretcher bed in the room and drifted in and out of sleep between nurse visits. Minh stretched out between a plastic chair and the foot of the stretcher, but when we realized after a couple hours that we were going to be there for a while longer, he went out to the car to sleep.

Leon had a tired whiny cry, probably less from being sick and more from the staff opening the door and waking him up every 30 minutes. After another dose of steroids and a second nebulizer treatment, he still had a raspy stridor when he inhaled. So at 5:30 a.m., he was taken by ambulance to Children’s Medical Center.

Thankfully the steroids kicked in not long after we got to the hospital, so he was mainly just admitted as a precaution. After about five hours of being monitored, he was discharged and we got to go home. Such a stressful, emotional, and all-around exhausting night.

Yesterday he cried and slept a lot. He didn’t want anything to do with his crib, so Minh and I took turns holding him while he slept. He was awake probably three hours total throughout the day, but this morning he woke up at his usual time and was extra smiley/giggly. (He’s doing this thing lately where he grins extra hard and says “heeeee” and it’s literally the cutest thing ever.) I’m hopeful that he’s on the mend!

With Thanksgiving coming up this week, I’m extra thankful to have a partner who helps when I need a break, a flexible job, and good medical resources nearby. I’m also thankful that we’ve already hit our deductible for the year!