ER

Good morning, friends. If you are a Facebook fan of Diary of a Zookeeper, you know that we had an eventful weekend here at the zoo, and I just wanted to fill you all in on what has happened/is happening with Roo! I apologize in advance for how rambling and disjointed this post may be--I am not running on a whole lot of sleep here...!

For about a week now, a virus has been making its way through our house--first with Monkey, then Lamb, and I got a touch of it as well (which I am still fighting off). It starts with a low-grade fever, then turns into a sore throat and headache that lasts a few days. So I wasn't all that surprised when I picked Roo up to put him to bed on Saturday and thought, "Hmmmm, he feels warm." His temp was 100.6, nothing major, but Mr. Fantastic and I decided to keep him home from church the next morning.

I still had to get up and go because I had some obligations yesterday morning, but my wonderful hubby stayed home with all three kids. When I got back home a little after noon, he told me that Roo had been coughing and that his breathing was raspy. Since we knew that it was similar symptoms to our other kids, I wasn't overly worried.

But then Mr. Fantastic had to leave to go to his dad's for a while, and I was trying to get the kids down for naps, and Roo's breathing started to get worse. I put him down for a nap, got the big kids settled (since they were getting over their little bug, everybody had to take a nap), and called the after-hour nurses' hotline. I figured that she would just give me some tips, but I was uncertain about whether I should let it go or get him checked out, since I knew it would likely get worse at night. Well, she wanted to me to check his chest to see if it was retracting when he would breathe, and when I tried to check, it woke him up. The noise that his breathing made while he was trying to cry was... indescribable. Loud and silent at the same time. It was scary, and the nurse could hear him through the phone. She said just to take him straight to Children's Hospital.

Sooooooo... the big kids went to a friend's house, Roo and I headed to the hospital, and Mr. Fantastic met me there. They took us straight back, which was great. He got a breathing treatment, which helped minimally, then a dose of oral steroids. (I need to note here that his breathing was lousy, but he has happy and laughing and flirting with everyone!) They kept him for observation, then decided to do a second breathing treatment, this one a little bit different. And when he was still raspy after that, the ER doc recommended admitting him. Since croup typically gets worse at night, she was concerned that he was going to end up back in the ER if we went home.

After that, it was a lot of "hurry up and wait." It took almost 2 hours for us to get a room, then three or four more people needed to check him out, etc, etc. But in all of the waiting and waiting and waiting, something else happened... he got much MUCH better. I half-jokingly asked our doctor if she really thought we needed to stay there, and she said it was probably best, just in case he got worse once the steroids wore off. In fact, looking over his papers from the day, she said Roo would quite likely need another treatment in the night, and that they may keep him a second night, just to be safe...!

At this point, a lot of things were going on, and I'm going to glaze over some of it... it was getting late, Roo hadn't really had a nap, he hadn't eaten dinner, and he was WAY hyper from the steroids. Doctors and nurses were coming and going, and it kept getting later. We did finally get to feed him around 8:00 (his normal dinner is at 6:00 and bedtime at 7:00ish), and then he was so wound up we had to put him in the crib and put the sides up. He was having a BLAST!  :-)

But as it got later... and he wasn't sleeping... and he was doing amazingly well... and we found out it would be almost $2,000 for us just to stay there overnight... we convinced the doctor that we are responsible adults who would bring our child back if we needed to, and she let us go home.

So yes, we came home. It was around 11:00 at night when we left the hospital, and Roo was still crazy hyper--but he fell asleep in less than two minutes oncce we got in the van.

When we got home, Mr. Fantastic determined that he was going to get up every hour and check on Roo. (Isn't is sweet?) But around 12:15 at night, when I was still awake and he was snoring away, I realized that the combination of constant snoring and an alarm going off every hour were not going to be conducive to a good night's sleep for me... so I just went in and slept on the floor of Roo's room. Still not a great night's sleep, but it was better than the alternative at that point.

ANYWAY, he slept GREAT. He sounds a little bit stuffy today, but just like he has a cold--and his breathing is not audible at all. No coughing or hacking in the night, no distressed breathing, nothing. I am so, so grateful that he is doing this much better less than 24 hours after that episode that sent us to the ER.

So there's our update! Thank you so much to everyone who was praying and who e-mailed and checked on us. I know that Roo's fantastic recovery is the result of a lot of prayer.

Now if I could just get some sleep...! But not this morning. Because this morning, you see, is Monkey's "meet the teacher" day at his preschool. I'll keep you posted...