Another exciting croup experience

Ellie and I have been sick for the past few days. At first it was just a cold with a mid-grade fever. Nothing to worry about, we figured. I took her in to the SOS Internatinal clinic here, and the doctor gave her Robitussin and said to keep her comfy with that and ibuprofin. Then yesterday afternoon, about 6 hours later, I hear her cough, and it sounds like a seal. Uh oh. But she changes position (she's sleeping on the sofa at this point) and the cough gets more normal. Ok, perhaps just a false alarm.

Well, needless to say, about 9pm the seals are back, this time with stridor, the wheezy breathing that comes with croup. Jen and I are both remembering January, when we had to take her into the ER in DC because she was having so much difficulty breathing. She's not that bad yet, but we aren't in DC, so we are getting nervous. We call the SOS clinic, and the on-call doctor says to just bring her in so he can examine her and give her the steroids if necessary. We start to rush around, call a good friend to come and just make sure Ben is fine, and when he arrives we zip out to SOS, at around 10pm. The doctor does a lengthy exam, listening to everything, and then they pull out the nebulizer. Ellie screams and fights, but they take a break in the middle to give her steroids, and the second time on the nebulizer she's much calmer, and she even falls asleep at the end.

After we come home, she has a few more awakenings, but she sounds much better, and this morning she woke with no fever. She's been gradually getting better all day. You'd think that was good, but I've been keeping pace with her, only in the opposite direction. I've been spacy and feverish all last night and all day today. I don't quite know what we'll do if she's running around full bore tomorrow, and I'm still like this. We also appear to have infected Sinen, so we are working with just Somany, who has her hands full with Ben. I've been on Ellie duty in order to limit the infection as much as possible. Ah well, we'll see how it goes tomorrow.

The good news is that the SOS took our call very seriously, and is more than capable of handling croup or similar problems. They have a whole mini-ER set up, and there is always somebody on call. That makes us feel a whole lot better about being here.