Sad Day Indeed

Today we awoke to a toddler who could barely breath.

He was so congested, but didn't seem to know how to cough and make things better.

We called the doc, and found out our pediatrician's office actually makes Sunday appointments.

So we waited...

and did a lot of this:

Found it to be a tender mercy when we got some of this:

But mostly just felt like this:

We went to our appointment and were a little startled when the doctor called the nurse to begin a treatment upon walking into our room.

Poor Kaeden was having such a hard time breathing.  His little chest restricting with each breath.

The doctor knew from first look that it was Croup.

When he left the room to give the nurses further orders, I immediately Googled "Croup" on my phone, and three webpages later became an expert.  Seriously?  How cool is technology.  I go from not really knowing what it is to being rather well informed and able to converse with the doctor about Kaeden's condition in a matter of minutes.


Jeff was admittedly having a hard time seeing his little boy in the condition he was in.  I never really panicked, since my maternal instincts told me everything would be okay, but I figure that a good time to do so would have been when the doctor pulled Jeff aside and told him, "Your son is really sick.  We're going to do all we can to keep him out of the hospital."

They gave Kaders a breathing treatment with some oxygen, and a steroid to help open his airways.

Our little guy was a champ through the whole thing.  Seriously.  The kid would never even make a peep if his leg were on fire.  He's just so mellow.

The nurses and doctor came to check his oxygen levels every 15 minutes and every time Kaeden would just look at the door opening and give us what we call "grumpy lip".  They never did anything that actually hurt, he just didn't want to be bothered again.

Lucky for us, Kaeden's labored breathing was significantly improved after a couple of hours.  But his oxygen levels remained rather low.

These pictures were after a few hours in a small room.  I think we all were feeling a little goofy at this point. [And I was happy to have my slightly smiley boy back].

They let us go home, but the doctor didn't seem 100% confident that we wouldn't need to go to Primary Children's later tonight.  He even sent us out the door with our visit notes just in case.  For now we're just keeping an eye on him. Some kids can rebound after the steroid treatment, and their airways can get inflammed again.

Nighttime can be especially hard for children with Croup.  But...so far so good.  Our happy boy is acting more and more like himself each hour.

And he gets to snuggle with me in my bed for the next couple of nights.

Doctor's orders.  :)

Update:  He made it through the night just fine.  Yay!

On a side note:  If anyone needs a pediatrician referral in the Salt Lake area, let me know.  We have really liked every doctor we've had contact with in Kaeden's pediatrician's office.  That especially includes the on-call doctor who saw Kaeden today.  Good people.  Seriously.