One Scary Night

Calvin has been battling the croup for the past few days. The nurse at the doctor's office explained the seriousness of the croup and the striders that can also come with the croup. Calvin gave me a scare Friday afternoon so I took him to Phoenix Children's Hospital ER to be checked out. The nurse practitioner we saw said he looked fine and gave us an antibiotic because his ear looked a little red and since the weekend was coming up. She said we were more than welcome to come back if we thought is breathing was bad.

Well....around 9:30 Friday night Calvin woke up gasping for air and had really bad striders. We rushed him to Good Night Peds (closest to the house) so he could get a breathing treatment. When we walked in it looked like we would have a good experience. The lady at the front desk called the triage nurse right away and then we waited!! There was a doctor and nurse that were staring at us and not doing anything to help. Well I panicked a little and said, "can't either one of you help us!" They took us back and then had to weigh Calvin, who is still gasping for air and panicking, and got his pulse and oxygen level. The doctor who was just sitting there still looked at us and said they had it under control. Bryon then popped off to him because they didn't do anything yet. The nurse who was sitting on her butt also chimed in- sounds like he has croup- NO CRAP LADY!!

So two breathing treatments and a dose of oral steroids later they called the ambulance to take us to PCH to get Calvin under control. The doctor apologized to us saying he didn't realize how serious Calvin was. I understand that parents can freak out but we had every right - I think so at least :)

Calvin loved the ambulance ride. He didn't make a fuss.

When we got to PCH they took us to the NICU and we got the best care! Our nurse was from Ireland (we knew we were in good hands) and lived out in Buckeye so Bryon thought she was awesome. They had to give him another breathing treatment and then we got x-rays to make sure this throat wasn't closing. All checked out well with that. They finally admitted us so Calvin could be observed. Around 3 am we got our room. It was the longest night! Bryon went home to get two hours of sleep (only one parent was allowed to stay) and I stayed with Calvin - only getting about 1 hour of sleep. The fire alarm went off at 3:45 and then the little girl we shared a room with alarms went off at 4. Once they got her settled down, Calvin woke up at 4:45 and stayed awake for a little while!!

They discharged us around 10:30am and we headed home to get some much needed rest. He slept sound last night and is having a great day.