A Case of Croup

Friday night may have been the scariest night of our lives. Jessica was babysitting and Julie and I were at the Oculus holiday party. So we were pretty tired by the time we got into bed around 11:45pm. Link had a great night with Jessica and Chris, and as far as anyone knew he went to bed perfectly healthy.

About fifteen minutes later Link woke us up and started a pretty scary series of events. Spoiler alert, he's fine now.

• 12:05am: We hear Link coughing pretty loudly through the monitor. This isn't usually a big deal. 
• 12:10am: He's still coughing so I go in to check on him. I can clearly hear and see that he is having trouble breathing and that it's causing him a lot of distress. It sounds like this.
• When your child is having trouble breathing it's one of the scariest things in the world. You realize that nothing else matters but getting him to breathe again.
• 12:11am: First thing I do is open his mouth to see if he's swallowed anything, like a pacifier. His mouth is empty, but the commotion and Link's crying is enough to get Julie out of bed.
• 12:15am: Julie reassures me that he still has color and that his fingertips are ok so he's getting air. But we quickly realize that he needs medical attention so we rush to the hospital.
• 12:30am: Arrive at El Camino hospital and check in to triage. No one seems particularly concerned about Link's condition.  At this point I try to remain calm, but the fact that Link is still really struggling to breathe is incredibly scary.
• 12:45am: We are in a hospital room and a doctor comes in to check on Link. He realizes that Link has croup, something that's been relatively common in this area recently.
• At this point I'm able to finally calm down a bit. Link doesn't have some debilitating disease and he's not about to die.
• 1:00am: They give Link this racemic epinephrine via mist which has an almost immediate effect in clearing up his breathing. They tell us they will monitor him for 2 hours, and if he's ok then he can go home. 
• They also give him some oral steroids, but he was so upset that he spit out most of it. We had to do a second dose to get it in.
• The steroids take ~6 hours to kick in, but they last for days which should help with future symptoms.
• 1:30am: The stridor breathing is back. They say they will administer another dose of the mist.
• 2:10am: We finally get another dose. Why did it take so long? But they say he will need to be admitted, and that he'll need to go Stanford.
• 2:30am: I send Julie home so she can get some sleep. It's going to be a long night and she is 6 months pregnant. I get a few moments reset before she leaves.

• 3:30am: Still waiting on that ambulance to take us to Stanford. They wouldn't let me take an uber over there, because it would have meant a ton of paperwork. So we have to use an ambulance. Sounds overly expensive to me, but I'm too tired to argue at this point.
• 4:00am: Link is wired from the steroids and seems perfectly healthy. He's just running around the hospital having a good time.

• 4:10am: The ambulance finally arrives. Julie's old colleague from when she was a nurse at the Stanford PICU is part of the transport team helping us get Link to Stanford.

• 4:30am: Arrive at Stanford where Link isn't super thrilled. But he's a trooper. And he did enjoy the ambulance ride where he got to watch Netflix.
• Link has read lots about ambulances, after we overdosed on books about kids going to the doctor when he broke his leg. So this was pretty exciting for him

• 4:40am: Link is starving, but the doctor won't let him eat until she examines him to make sure it is safe.
• Why is it taking her so long to get in here and examine him? Doesn't she realize he's starving? It was frustrating for me to wait so long.
• I was incredibly exhausted and hungry at this point.
• 5:00am: They are poking and prodding Link, but he seems pretty healthy. He hates all the monitoring equipment they attach to him, but he handles it well. We were fortunate enough to have brought our iPad, so Link was pretty entertained to watch Wheels on the Bus.
• 5:40am: Link finally gets to sleep! Since his second dose of epinephrine, he's been perfectly fine.

• 5:45am: I really wish we had packed better. I had no extra clothes for myself, no food for myself.
• I also really regretted not packing any books for Link. I kept asking the nurses if they had any, but even at Stanford there were none available until the library opened in the morning. 
• 6:00am: I am so ridiculously exhausted and finally fall asleep. The Stanford rooms are really nice, and they have a little couch that turned into a makeshift bed.
• 7:30am: The nurses do a shift change. Apparently this involves waking up me and my sleeping child. I'm not amused. They say that their team of doctors will be in shortly to do one final check on Link. If he's still ok they'll send him home.
• 8:30am: Julie comes in to relieve me.  I head home to get some food and sleep.
• 12:00pm: After three hours of youtube, Julie is finally able to get the doctor's to give Link a final check. He's ok, and they send him home.

That afternoon Link took a three hour nap, and he slept for 11 hours that night. He seems to be back to his normal self, but we brought him in for a recommended check up the next day just to be sure. If the croup symptoms or stridor come back we'll be prepared.