I wrote this last week beside my son's hospital bed.
The other night it happened again. We thought he's just got a cough. We put the baby boy down to sleep like we always do.
Half an hour into his sleep, he can't breathe. He's coughing and sucking in deep breaths. This sniffy nose of his is turning out to be what they always told us when he catches a cold, an immediate trip to hospital.
After the wife manages to bring up the phlegm that was annoying him, we're in the car with a boy that is breathing better. I'm telling the wife to slow down through the speed camera light intersections whilst I'm in the back checking on him.
We get to emergency and bypass a filled waiting room of sick babies. Glad for that, but the scorn faces of others that we push past burns as if we were the worst people on earth.
We soon are told our boy has croup. If you know our story with our baby not breathing properly, you'd know he has tracheomalacia. This plus croup is not a great combination unfortunately, as croop narrows his breathing passages and his condition already has it narrow enough.
On to the meds, which give him an allergic reaction. Out come the hives. There is now concerns he might swell up. On to an oxygen mask that sprays adrenalin in his face. This helps open his airways.
It works like magic.
So he has an OK night's sleep after all this. He still has his cough though, but he still has his smile. All his stats look good.
As I write this beside his hospital bed, I am hoping we'll go home today, but I don't want to go home and go through all that again. Enough with the freak out moments. This part of life we can all do without.
So I am staying close in his room. I'd hate to walk the corridors and bump in to parents we've met on previous stays. I want them all to be home. I don't want them to still be here.
Stupid croup.
My whining on Twitter about not being able to afford my old lifestyle of computer gaming doesn't matter so much anymore. All my time is focused on my boy to care.
Silly things aren't they?
- tork
The other night it happened again. We thought he's just got a cough. We put the baby boy down to sleep like we always do.
Half an hour into his sleep, he can't breathe. He's coughing and sucking in deep breaths. This sniffy nose of his is turning out to be what they always told us when he catches a cold, an immediate trip to hospital.
After the wife manages to bring up the phlegm that was annoying him, we're in the car with a boy that is breathing better. I'm telling the wife to slow down through the speed camera light intersections whilst I'm in the back checking on him.
We get to emergency and bypass a filled waiting room of sick babies. Glad for that, but the scorn faces of others that we push past burns as if we were the worst people on earth.
We soon are told our boy has croup. If you know our story with our baby not breathing properly, you'd know he has tracheomalacia. This plus croup is not a great combination unfortunately, as croop narrows his breathing passages and his condition already has it narrow enough.
On to the meds, which give him an allergic reaction. Out come the hives. There is now concerns he might swell up. On to an oxygen mask that sprays adrenalin in his face. This helps open his airways.
It works like magic.
So he has an OK night's sleep after all this. He still has his cough though, but he still has his smile. All his stats look good.
As I write this beside his hospital bed, I am hoping we'll go home today, but I don't want to go home and go through all that again. Enough with the freak out moments. This part of life we can all do without.
So I am staying close in his room. I'd hate to walk the corridors and bump in to parents we've met on previous stays. I want them all to be home. I don't want them to still be here.
Stupid croup.
My whining on Twitter about not being able to afford my old lifestyle of computer gaming doesn't matter so much anymore. All my time is focused on my boy to care.
Silly things aren't they?
- tork
