Croup is Crap

Well.

I don't even know where to begin, so let's just rewind and recap a bit, m'kay? M'kay.

Last Sunday night, I told the hubby I finally felt like we might have a calm, get-in-a-groove week ahead of us, and I was so mentally anticipating the relief of it.

Then Monday morning, I woke up incredibly ill and spent the day throwing up and/or curled in a ball of chills and zapped energy.

By Tuesday midday, I was recovering, but Chicklet came down with an intense fever and incredible lethargy/loss of appetite/congestion.

That continued through Wednesday.

And Thursday--which was also the day Chica began battling a raging, incessant cough.

That was bad enough--coupled with low-grade fever--that I had to keep her home from school on Friday.

So by Saturday, I was like: praise heavens, hallelujah, Daddy is home and we can try to just recover. And so we did. Everybody a bit puny but happy to be together with not much on the agenda.

And then came Sunday.

The day that Little Man woke up fine, started sounding congested by noon...and was in the urgent care children's clinic by 4 pm.

I kid you not.

My Little Man is officially the first of my kiddos to be infected with croup. Yup, croup.

And his case was so severe that by the time we arrived at the clinic, his breathing was labored to the point of needing immediate relief to reduce the inflation of his air passageways via a special breathing treatment (delivered through a medicine-laced vaporizer that attached to an oxygen mask) before they could even administer the necessary steroids.

It was intense.

And terrifying to have a child that young fall that ill, that fast. Which is apparently the nature of croup (or so I've learned).

The unique seal bark/cough and the sound of his wet, difficult rasps are not things I'll soon forget.

Thankfully, we received excellent medical care through lovely personnel, but...it was a very long afternoon/evening.

Because the nature of the breathing treatment necessitated monitoring Little Man's vitals for four hours afterwards. Yup, four hours stuck in an exam room with a two-year-old and next to no entertainment.

Worse still, sometime between the third and forth hour post-treatment, he started worsening again. Which meant we had to go to the hospital, as per protocol if a second breathing treatment is required (which it was).

So.

My boy and I spent another four hours in the hospital this time, very much wanting to go home (both of us; he kept asking!) but not before he was stable.

At least we had a bed this time, and a movie. But it was still a grueling nine hours in all--ending with a return home after midnight.

I mean...Oye.

He did fairly well today, though he got a bit worse near bedtime, which is unsettling and makes for a restless, alert-Mama night.

And. To make matters even worse, Chicklet came down with a cough even worse than Chica's. And it got so bad around dinner time, I had to haul her to urgent care for meds to ensure that if it was croup for her as well, we could try to stop it in its tracks.

I mean...exhaustion. It is me.

It just feels like an endless, vicious cycle that's harder mentally than anything.

BUT.

I keep reminding myself incessantly that it could be so much worse. Our family's various illness are not chronic and will pass, and there are so many who are less fortunate, battling far worse health issues. 

So I'll pray for my not-quite-healthy brood, but I'll pray for those families more.

And I will be soooo grateful when we reach the day (hopefully soon!) when we're all relatively recovered.

Over and out.