It started with a text from my mom while I was at work Sunday afternoon. "I think Camille has Croup." I sent her a message back asking how she was and Mom responded with, "she seems okay, but she does have a barking cough." A few hours later, on my way home from work, I called Mom to check on Camille. Mom: "It definitely sounds like Croup to me. I think you may need to bring her to the doctor tomorrow." Me: "Alright, I'll see how she does tonight and call in the morning if I need to bring her in." I got home about 10 minutes later and sat in the kitchen chatting with Mom for about 15 minutes before we heard a funny sound on Camille's monitor. We both felt a little concerned so I went upstairs to check on Cami. What I found was my little girl sitting up in her bed with the loudest stridor I'd ever heard, looking slightly blue around the lips. Of course, I grabbed her and decided at that moment that we would be going to the Scottish Rite Urgent Care Center ASAP. After checking online to make sure they were open, I realized we were out of luck and I was either going to need to bring her to Gwinnett Medical's Peds ER or to the Scottish Rite Hospital ER. I decided to go with Scottish Rite's ER since they are a children's hospital. My sister headed over (she lives super close) and was in my garage by the time I was strapping Camille in the carseat. Mom stayed with Tripp and Alli rode in the backseat with Camille so there would be someone to watch her at all times. Yes, Rob was in Chattanooga. I called him on the way to the hospital, but assured him there was no reason to rush to us at this point. He had a huge test the next day that neither of us wanted him to miss. Once we got to the hospital, everything went very smoothly. Camille was taken right to a room and the only time we sat in the waiting room was for the 5 seconds in took for the transporter to come from the back to show us the way.
The entire ER experience was wonderful. The doctor poked his head in immediately to say he was dealing with another emergency, but even though he had not done an exam yet, he wanted to go ahead and have the respiratory therapist start the racemic epi treatment and have the nurse give her the oral steroids. His exact words were, "I'm really glad you brought her in. I could hear her stridor down the hall and her color doesn't look great." By this point Camille was attached to a monitor so they could watch her vital signs. Her sats were in the low 90's. The doc came back in about 15 minutes later to do his exam and said they were going to watch her for two hours post breathing treatment to see if her stridor improved. He was the nicest man and even sang, "The Wheels on the Bus," to keep Camille calm while he was in the room. Unfortunately for us, the stridor did not improve and required another dose of racemic epi when the two hours were up. This again, kept us in the ER for two more hours of observation at which point she received a third dose of racemic epi and caused us to have to be admitted to the respiratory unit. No fun! I was working on being up for almost 24 hours at that point and was feeling extremely exhausted. My sister stayed with us until we were transported to the unit and then had Chris come to pick her up. She was so nice to stay with us for that long even though she was going to have to go to work the next day. I felt fine staying at the hospital by myself because I knew we were in the best place if anything were to happen. Rob felt so bad he couldn't be with us (the joys of having a husband in his masters) and offered to meet me at the hospital. I told him to stay put because he was doing something very important for our family even though he wasn't at the hospital.
I didn't get much rest that night, maybe 1 hour at the most. Camille had a pulse ox and leads on so they could monitor her vitals and being the one year old she is, kept getting tangled and pulling everything off. To prevent the nurse from having to come back in every time, I would quickly put everything back on. Camille mostly wanted me to hold her and only laid down in the crib for about an hour (my glorious hour of sleep). The stridor did get better over the course of the next few hours, but we ended up staying at the hospital until that afternoon to be on the safe side. By the time, the hospitalist came in to do our discharge, we were both over the top exhausted and ready to go home. I was in the same clothes from the night before. I hadn't packed anything since I didn't plan on staying the night and was dying to take a shower and get a nap. We drove home and mom graciously stayed to play with Tripp while Camille and I took a nap. We had no trouble going to bed that night and again my awesome mom stayed with me in case Camille's croup got bad again. She did wake up once with a barking cough, but I was able to control her symptoms by putting her in a steamy bathroom and she never got as bad as the night before. Whew, so glad that's over! I truly hope we never get another case of Croup like that again. I mean, I can deal with Croup, but THAT, THAT was awful! No THANK YOU! Maybe we will catch up on our rest one of these days.
Post breathing treatment #1. Her color looked better, but she still sounded terrible. How is it that those gowns look so cute and so sad at the same time?!?
Finally in our room on the respiratory unit. All I could think about was my child getting strangled in the wires. No rest for the weary.
Moved the bed back a little. Notice Camille playing with the oxygen in the picture above. That wasn't going to work.
Poor sleepy baby. She tried laying down several times, but just couldn't seem to get comfortable. I'm sure she couldn't breathe as well in that position.
Caged in.
Not so happy about it.
But, I did get a few smiles here and there.
Quick, Nicole, turn off the lights and close your eyes while you can.
Watching Disney Junior to pass the time.
Yay, it's almost time to go! She was feeling and sounding so much better!
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