an ER visit

This week Geoff was out of town. He goes out of town 2-3 times a year. I was a little terrified for him to go out of town and know that I had to handle all of the kids by myself for 4 days. It was a little overwhelming to think about. On Monday and Tuesday I am pretty sure I was a little grumpy. Just thinking about him being gone was making me feel overwhelmed already. By the time he gets home around 5 each night I am sooo ready for some help. Camden is usually a crying mess at this point and just wants to be held. Brynlee is usually hitting her "witching" hours where she cries off and on and just wants to be held. Lunches have to made, I am usually trying to get dinner started, etc. So thinking about doing nights alone, was just plain exhausting. However, I new that if I put my mind to it and didn't think about things to much, then we could do it!! So, Wed., Thurs, and Fri. went off pretty well. We were on the last leg before Geoff got home. Then Friday night hit....Camden had been acting totally normal all day. I knew that he maybe was getting a little sick, but it seemed as though it was going to be very mild and just a little cold. He had no runny nose, no fever, no coughing....just when he would  cry, you could hear that deep cough maybe developing. Knowing that he might be getting sick, I went upstairs around 10 to check on him. He sounded just fine and was sleeping soundly, so I went back downstairs to feed Brynlee. After feeding Brynlee and talking to Geoff on the phone for a bit, I went back upstairs to check on him. It was about 11 now. I had told Geoff about how when he cried you could just tell he was getting sick and said to him "I bet you he wakes up in the morning with croup." Well...little did I know that when I walked into his room at 11, he already had it. When I walked in, it kind of woke him up a little and he was trying to sit up. Every time he would breathe, it sounded just awful. He truly was struggling and you could hear it. It was pretty scary. Geoff was still on the phone at this point and he could hear him through the phone. So, I got out the nebulizer and gave him a treatment to see if it would help. It didn't. So I called Geoff back and told him that I think I needed to take him to the ER. We discussed who I should maybe call to come to the house and be with the rest of the kids. She was called and on her way. When Tami got here we talked for a minute to see what she thought and to discuss which hospital we thought I should go to. The poor little guy at this point was wide awake just trying to breathe. We left the house about 11:45 and went into Ft. Worth to Cook Children's. I thought for sure that he would fall asleep in the car since it took us about 15 minutes to get there, but he stayed awake the whole time. I could just hear him trying to breathe the whole way there. It was just so sad. We walk in the ER and there is a nurse right outside the check in station. Before anyone even listens to him They all say, "wow, he is not doing good...he has croup." There were several other people at this point in the waiting room, but when they were listening to him breathe, they took us right back, ahead of everyone else there. We were in a room getting breathing treatments for him within 5 minutes of us being there. When we walked into the room, they already had a respiratory therapist in there with things set up just waiting for us. It was quite impressive. I don't think that I will ever go to another hospital for my kids. They were great!! We got there about midnight and were there all night long. He had the breathing treatment, which helped alot and then they gave him some steroids to help open up his lungs. They were supposed to start working about 6 hours after he received them and should last about 3-4 days. They also did  a flu test on him and a normal exam to check his ears and such. This little guy was awake almost all night. Only sleeping for about an hour from 2:30-3:30. It seems as though every time I would finally get him to sleep they would walk in and do another test, or give him some medicine or whatever and it would wake him up almost immediately to where he would just start screaming all over again. Every time someone touched him, he would scream. Every time he screamed, he started sounding awful again and would struggle to breathe. That one hour that he got to sleep and was left untouched he actually started to sound quite a bit better. They were going to keep us all day at one point, but luckily the little guy cleared up just in time for us to leave before they admitted him. So we got home right around 6 A.M. It was a very long night. I got zero sleep and then had to do all of the kids by myself the next day. It was absolutely exhausting to say the least. But we made it through!! I am just grateful that it was not more serious and that he never fully developed the awful croupy cough that comes with it...he just couldn't breathe.

Here he is finally asleep on my lap. This is a bad picture. I was trying to send it to Geoff and it was taken on my phone with no flash. Sorry. 

 This was right before the Dr. wanted to check his ears. I decided that we have quite the feisty little guy on our hands after this experience. He is one tough kid. As the Dr. was trying to check his ears he was kicking and screaming as hard and as loud as he could. It took 3 of us to hold the poor kid down just for this. Later when they did the flu test, there were 2 male nurses doing it. The one was doing the test, the other was a 6' guy about 230 lbs and was in general a tough looking guy. It took his entire body on top of this poor little dude to hold him still enough to get the test done and the sample that they needed. He was NOT very cooperative. Then again, he had been up all night and didn't feel well and couldn't breathe.