Fun fun fun! Well my last post was rather optimistic when I said that Owen was on the mend from his terrible bout of croup. Not so. The story begins with Owen being due for his second flu shot on Friday the 28th. He was still sounding really terrible (3 days into it) so I called the advice nurse who suggested waiting until Monday’s flu clinic. He still sounded awful on Saturday, and still sounded awful on Sunday (surely he’ll be getting better soon, right???), and then Monday. I called the advice nurse again to say that, gee, he really still sounds awful. She could hear him coughing and wheezing in the background. I was calling to see if they thought he should have his flu shot… and she thought it was weird that he still sounded so bad after nearly six days (the average croup is supposed to last only 3 to 5 days). She found a slot at 4:30pm on Monday to see the pediatrician.
When we arrived at the office, the nurse quickly called for our doctor to listen to Owen’s chest. At this point he was really heaving his ribcage in an effort to get full breaths. They hooked his toe up to an O2 saturation sensor (99% - just fine) - so he was definitely getting enough oxygen… just having to work really hard to do so. So then Owen got to chew on (I mean, inhale) a nebulizer with epinephrine mist to try to open up his airway. After his crying objections to having a plastic pipe stuck in his mouth, the mist did seem to help calm his breathing after only a couple of minutes. The doctor decided to administer a shot of steroids to see him through the night and hopefully allow him to be comfortable enough over the coming days to get ahead of the croup and heal.
Friday evening rolls around… I called Patrick on his way home from work to say that I think I should call the advice nurse again and see if we can have Owen seen again in the evening clinic hours. While on the phone, she could again hear Owen in the background and said that she was very concerned about how bad he still sounds after almost 10 days now. She told us to take him to the ER immediately. OK… but I just wanted an evening doctor’s appointment, that’s all!!!
OK, so I loaded up Owen with the bare minimum of supplies and we (he and I) headed to the ER at St.Vincent’s. Once there, they whisked us back to pediatrics eager to get a look at him. All the while, Owen was thrilled at the adventure we were on… new sights, new faces, new sounds… he was happy as could be! We had a repeat of the treatments from Monday (nebulizer and steroid shot) - though it took nearly 4 hours for them to accomplish what could have taken 30 minutes. In the middle of all this they asked me if there was any possibility that he had something lodged in his throat… well, no, he’s been eating and drinking just fine. However, he does have a two and a half year old brother will small toys around - well, that’s all I had to say and we were rushed down the hall for a chest x-ray. Any of you ever had to do an infant chest x-ray? Not a fun experience - for either of us. He has to sit on this little acrylic bicycle seat, then have his arms held at full extension above his head while a clear acrylic clam-shell column closes tighly around his torso… hold still for about 3 minutes… oh, and try to get him not to cry! HA! Yeah right!!! Long story short, nothing lodged in his throat. Yeah, I could have told you that without the barbaric torture device on my son, thank-you-very-much. Oh, the technician said, not to worry, he won’t remember this!
The ER doctor was making consult calls to other pediatricians while we were in the ER, and finally decided that admitting Owen to the hospital was the only choice. After we were settled into our room in the pediatric wing, the poking and prodding and measuring started all over again, this time overseen by a pediatrician from our clinic. She was actually very nice and kind and left orders to put him on the nebulizer as often as necessary and call her if there were any changes in his condition.
She also mentioned in passing that both the epinephrine and the steroid Owen had been given a couple of hours prior were UPPERS. And they were kicking in. Owen was wired for sound from 10pm through 5am, laughing, talking, rolling around, yelling, etc etc etc… Needless to say, it was a long night in the hospital, though he didn’t need any treatments because the steroid had worked its magic. He and I finally got to sleep at about 5:30am and it lasted two hours until the nurses changed shifts.
We were then in hurry-up-and-wait mode during the day yesterday until our pediatrician could come over to the hospital and assess Owen. He finally did so at about 1pm, at which point he still had no explanation for the severity and longevity of this croup, and referred us to an ear, nose and throat specialist after the weekend. He prescribed oral steroids to keep him on for the next week in the hope that Owen will be comfortable enough in his breathing to eat and sleep normally - and hopefully heal.
The appointment with the specialist is scheduled for this coming Tuesday afternoon. The current guess is that Owen may have a structural abnormality in his respiratory tract (a condition called subglottic stenosis), a thickening of the wall just below his vocal chords which could cause these issues. Well, that remains to be seen. So, the adventure continues…
So we got the OK to come back at the 9-month mark! Maybe he’ll be crawling by then…