To breathe or not to breathe...

Sunday morning Rhet woke up with a cough that sounded very much like croup. My first response was "oh great," and my second response was "I am not taking him to church." Keith wasn't feeling very well either-apparently too much hunting made him feverish-and so I left my two sickies home and went to church. Around dinner time I noticed Rhet was getting a little worse-he hadn't coughed except for earlier that morning but he was short of breath but still my active little boy so I just watched him the rest of the night. By bed time he was struggling for breath so we got the humidifier out and opened up the windows. I left his door open just in case he needed to get to me during the night. 12:30am came around and Rhet was by my bed worse and trying to breathe. For the next 2 hours I went back and forth trying to help him and trying to figure out if I should take him to the emergency room. (I guess you should always be safe than sorry, but it can also be one of those things if you are over reacting and can just wait it out till morning-what do you do?) I made up my mind to take him to the emergency room where we were the only ones there and got seen as soon as I walked in the door. The nurse that came to get us could hear Rhet's breathing all the way down the hall and knew it didn't sound very good. They gave him three breathing treatments and just wanted us to hang out so they could watch him for a couple of hours to see if he would improve. When they came to check on him he had made little progress and called the hospital to see what they recommended. We ended up in the back of an ambulance (no sirens-just to transport us) on our way to children's hospital. The doctor there checked him out and come to find out that it wasn't asthma but a viral infection of croup called stridor-which is in the upper airway and is obstructed. It is therefore very serious-thus if you can't breath you die. Even though his airway was constricted and inflamed he didn't require any additional oxygen-which was a good sign but he still needed to be observed if worsened. In those wonderful small hospital rooms they can get a little cabin feverish-especially for a 2 yr old, so when we wanted to walk the halls for something to do he had to wear a mask-which he did not like, but knowing he could have all the juice, crackers, milk, ice cream, and popsicles he wanted made the mask more bearable. By dinner time the doctor came in to check how he was doing and decided to keep him overnight just to make sure. She heard just a little bit of the stridor but wasn't yet ready to send us home. This morning he was doing a lot better. He is coughing a little more which will last a few more weeks-hopefully be gone by the time baby gets here-and is still a little short of breath but 90% improved with no signs of stridor. Now if I can just get him to be nice-I guess he thinks when he is sick he can be mean and get a way with it.