This afternoon, Kailee awoke from her nap making a scary sound. With every breath, she barked, cried, and grabbed at her neck and throat. It was the scariest thing ever to come out of her mouth. With my mom's encouragement (she had just arrived at our house to drop off Gavin), I called 911 and two wonderful sets of paramedics came to Kailee's rescue. The first came from the fire station a block away--so thankful for its geographical convenience--and another from a further station but who specializes in small children emergencies. Naturally when they arrived, Kailee stopped the hysterics, though she kept making the barking sound when she coughed. The paramedics offered to transport us to the hospital though they felt we could easily make it to the hospital to get her checked out for croup as long as we kept her calm. My mom and Gavin accompanied us in my car--we felt the ambulance ride would have the opposite effect.
So off we went to Children's Medical Center in Plano (again, SUPER-THANKFUL there's one nearby). Once there, Kailee ran around, played and acted 100% well. She did get upset when they checked her out, and in her hysterics demonstrated the barking sound. As we suspected, she was determined to have croup and was prescribed a steroid. They told us it was common for children to have an attack of croup at home and then arrive at the hospital appearing to be well because the AC in the car can help the symptoms. CRAZY.
Croup is caused by a viral infection and is a symptom typical in babies and toddlers--Gavin is in fact right at the age where kids are less inclined to have croup. She's contagious while she continues to bark (though she's not barking as much anymore) or if she develops a fever, as long as the fever persists. So tomorrow we'll be staying home--did I mention Brady is out of town? Yep, Brady had agreed to keep the kids anytime they were sick for the rest of the school year. Well... He's out of town for a military class for 2 weeks. Of course that's when something would go wrong! YaYa took Gavin home with her tonight to help us out. This way, Kailee can sleep in. Otherwise, I'd have had to get her up to get Gavin to school by 7:45.
Unfortunately Kailee cannot begin her steroid until tomorrow. When I picked it up this evening, the pharmacist warned me that the number one side effect is hyperactivity and that there was a slight possibility that it would keep her up all night. He strongly recommended waiting until the morning. We will heed his suggestion.
So hopefully tonight won't be too bad for my sweetie-pie. The nurse told us to run a hot bath and sit in the bathroom for her to inhale the warm air as one option if the barking gets worse during the night. In the winter, it is actually recommended to go outside and have the child inhale the cold winter air to reduce the swelling in the throat. A good friend of ours told us that the icebox works just as well; I will keep that in mind if necessary since there's definitely not cold winter air in Texas right now.
In my life, I have made three 911 calls and this is the first I actually remember. The others, I have ZERO recollection of being on the phone with the 911 operator. I was in survival mode, with lots of adrenaline, and have no memory of any part of the calls. I remember dealing with the emergency crews in person but not the phone calls. The first was when a child I was babysitting was attacked by a dog and the other was when we had our horrible car accident exactly 5 years ago today, on our way to church, on Palm Sunday (it's Palm Sunday today, creepy coincidence). Needless to say, Palm Sundays falling on April 1st will always make me a little bit leery.
XOXO,
