Monday, May 05, 2008

One of these things is not like the others

As I said, Elissa's been sick. About 10pm last night she woke again, and when I went up, I was stunned to hear stridor (that great Darth Vader breathing you get in croup) in her cries. She calmed down and went back to sleep, but I decided I'd best not have another glass of wine, since there was a good chance I'd be driving to the hospital at 3am.

2:50am she woke again with much worse stridor and I got dressed and carted her off to hospital. Now, the two boys would have been the objects of pity and rushed straight into resusc by the time I got them to hospital from the point she was at when she woke up. Not so much with Elissa. She was calm, smiling at the nurse, no sign of stridor at all. She coughed once or twice, enough to convince them I wasn't actually delusional, just ridiculously over reacting. She just got steadily better waiting an hour for the doctor to see her. I felt like an idiot. I apologised to the doctor that obviously this is the odd one out, since both my sons and myself get croup as spasmodic croup - very fast onset which rapidly gets worse. It looks like Elissa might get the traditional variety. There was a hint of this on the basis that she had actually been ill before the croup started (which is how normal croup presents) but that never happens with the boys.

The doctor, to her credit, was sympathetic and gave me a dose of steroids for her in case she needs it tonight. She also told me what the quantity of active ingredient is so that I can work out what dose to give her from Charlie's stash in case I need it more than 48hrs from when they drew out the dose. (It is highly likely it is the same dose, the doctor and I think there is only one formulation.)

So I agree with Mim, who needs sleep?

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