Sickie

This week in the Inserra household, we are dealing with something we don't usually have to worry about... a sick child. Saturday night brought a low-grade fever (we never have fevers), so I kept him home from church on Sunday. He seemed ok during the day, but that night he woke up with the dreaded croup. For those of you without children, or who are fortunate enough to never have dealt croup, it's no fun. It happens when the weather changes (even if just for a few days, i.e. the "fall" weather we had last week) and it happens in the middle of the night. Don't all sicknesses?!? Anyway, they wake up in the middle of the night coughing, but the cough doesn't sound human. It sounds more like a barking seal. And then they can't catch their breath and so it sounds like they're having an asthma attack or something like it. The only way to help it is to whisk them to the nearest bathroom and run all the hot water at full blast with the door shut in order to trap in all the steam, which helps their windpipe to open up. If that doesn't work after about 20 minutes, you quickly run with your barely breathing child to the freezer (or outside if you live in a cold climate) and stick their head in. Sounds awful. And if that still doesn't work, you're off to your local friendly emergency room. Thankfully we've been able to skip that last step each time, but we wound up at the doctor Monday.

But after a good dose of Prednisone, he was seemingly back to normal. Enough to go to school yesterday. At least the doctor said it would be fine. But now he's hacking and sniffling again and just being generally irritable. As in antagonizing the dog, insisting on sleeping in the middle of the living room floor instead of his bedroom, and having a sudden fascination with anything that plugs into the wall. And he won't eat chicken soup! This is one of those days that I just might watch the Disney cartoon Robin Hood movie at least 3 or 4 times.