Friday, October 05, 2007

What sort of child gets croup on a 35 deg day?

Mine apparently. I went to visit the newborn Gates family member, Griffin, on Wednesday. On my way home about 6ish Crash mentioned that Charlie was sounding a bit croupy, but he was fine when I got home. I checked him several times after he went to bed, all good.

Then at 11ish, about 2 minutes after I had dozed off, he woke up screaming and sounding very croupy indeed. So I took him in to RPAH, with him clearly getting worse on the car trip. He has had many visits before, but he normally gets better in the warm, calm car trip, not worse.

So I don't know about RNS, but I can definitely not complain about service at RPAH. I had not managed to write Charlie's name on the admission form before the triage nurse came out to us and took us straight to resusc. He had a neb of adrenalin within 5 minutes of us walking in the door. A shot of steroids and all was good again.

The only small stress we had was that our very lovely (but possibly overenthusiastic) doctor decided to read the manual. Bad plan. Turns out the hospital policy is that any child given adrenalin must be admitted. We have had adrenalin several times before without being admitted, and the nursing staff were most surprised to discover this policy. Being admitted is not a good thing. It results in tired kid, tired mum, and much slower recovery. I made my objection clear, but the doctor was standing by policy.

Thankfully, once our mandatory 4 hr stay was up, I was told we could go home. I owe much to the nursing staff who clearly assisted the doctor in changing her mind.

With any luck, this will be the last for the season.

2 comments:

  1. I read the post title in and thought "oh no, not again!". Damn. And 4 hours at the hospital - erk :(

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  2. We've dealt with croup ourselves with our son and daughter. We usually run a hot shower to get the bathroom steamy and let them breath the wet air. It usually eliminates a trip to the ER.
    Hope he feels better.

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