A Bump in the Road

We are finally home after spending a very long day in the hospital--Parker was admitted to the hospital yesterday because he was having trouble breathing. He started out with a little cough last Friday. On Saturday, he was up all night with croup. It was very scary and we almost took him in then, but knowing they would admit him as soon as we walked through the door, we decided to wait it out at home. On Sunday morning, I took Parker to see his on-call pediatrician. She said that he did have croup and prescribed some oral steroids. The croup seemed to loosen up just a few hours after his first dose and it turned into a very wet cough instead. Yesterday afternoon, Parker took a turn for the worse. He was upset all afternoon, having trouble breathing, and his heart rate was very high. I tried everything I could think of to help him feel better, but by the time Jason got home from work, he hadn't improved at all. We knew that taking him to the hospital was about our only option. So at 7:30 last night, we arrived at the ER. They saw Parker relatively quickly for a busy ER, and they determined within an hour or so that he needed to be admitted--we knew that would happen. Unfortunately, then we had to wait 2 and 1/2 hours in the ER for them to move us to a room. It was very frustrating. Parker was finally able to go to sleep around 2:00am. But, being in an unfamiliar and scary place, neither of us slept good. Today was just a day of waiting and monitoring. Parker did much better today so we were hoping to go home. Dr. Williams came to see him around 2:00pm and said he was comfortable with us going home, if we were. We didn't have to think very long about that--we packed up our stuff and came home! Parker was exhausted and we really felt that it would be best to take him home. Because Parker has a rare lung condition and is on several uncommon medicines, it will always be tricky when Parker gets sick. Most doctors are clearly uncomfortable in caring for him. This will probably always be something we struggle with. But for now we are extremely grateful that he is OK and that it was just one day in the hospital--hopefully just a little bump in the road.