Our exciting weekend ER trip

First, don't freak out! Everyone is fine. With that being said, Dylan started acting a little under the weather on Friday night, but nothing major. By Saturday he was pretty droopy; fever, bad cough, lethargic. My MIL watched him on Saturday while I did childcare at church. When I picked him up he was doing ok, but didn't want to eat or drink anything. I contemplated at this point taking him to urgent care because this cough he was developing was the worst thing I had ever heard. I decided he would be ok until the next day so I took him home to put him to bed. The bad part was that I couldn't even get him to take Tylenol, and he was very warm. He wouldn't eat the chewables, I put the liquid in his juice but he wouldn't drink, Kev and I even held him down and squirt it in his mouth, but it was all coming back out. So here is the timeline after that:

-He goes to bed at about 9:30.

-from 9:30 to 11:00 he is waking up every 10 minutes crying, then coughing, then wheezing. Plus he is burning up.

- 11:00 we decide we need to take him to the ER (JFK....yuck) Surprisingly he sleeps fairly well on our laps while we wait.

12:00 the admitting nurse looks at him, hears him cough, says it sounds like croup, and gives him tylenol via suppository....poor little boy. He is traumatized because he had to be naked while she got the medicine, and she had to take his sock off to take his pulse. They send us back out to the waiting room.

1:00 he gets into a bed and falls asleep immediately, I'm sure the tylenol was helping.

1;30 the doctor comes and examines him, tries to do it while he's sleeping, but wakes him up and he flips out. he falls back asleep. The doc says he has croup which is a viral infection that effects the upper respiratory system and causes the airways to constrict.

2:00 the respiratory specialist comes to give him a breathing treatment which consists of a fine vapor (with meds in it) that is blown out of a tube under his nose so that he breathes it in. He can do this while he sleeps which is great until the doc puts his stethoscope on his back and wakes him up. He is so delirious at this point that he freaks out over this stuff blowing in his face and we have to fight to keep him breathing it the rest of the time.

2:15 the portable xray machine and technician come to take xrays of his neck and chest. He tries to be cooperative but it was hard cause he had to lay and sit certain ways and stay very still. I couldn't be anywhere near the machine because of my pregnancy, so Kev had to handle that mess by himself. It was kind of cute when we were explaining to Dyl that the xray machine was going to take a picture, he said "Noooo, I don't want to say cheese!".

2:45 The respiratory guy comes back and says he has to give him another treatment. He has fallen back to sleep so I am relieved. Then half way into it the nurse comes and says she has to give him an antibiotic shot. So he wakes up again and freaks out for the rest of the treatment.

3:30 he is discharged, and we are told to see our regular doc on monday. We all went straight to bed when we got home and Dyl slept till almost 9, and actually woke up in a great mood.

He was feeling a lot better the next day, still didn't want to eat a whole lot but I was able to slip him tylenol in his juice. He slept ok on Sunday night and I took him to the doc on Monday. He said he sounded much better and he prescribed me a medication to help in case he started really struggling again. He also told me that this is a viral infection, so it does NOT need antibiotics! Grrrr. I don't know whether they were just covering their bases with the shot, but that doesn't make me happy. It was one of the longest nights of our lives! It was so horrible watching him suffer so much and not being able to understand while all these weird things were happening to him. Luckily, he hasn't even talked about it, he probably thinks it was all a bad dream.

Bless you if you actually read this whole thing! Sorry it was so long, but I could have easily made it longer, lol. Keep Dyl in your prayers as he continues to recover.