Kellan in the ER
It is hard to believe that twelve weeks flew by so fast after Kellan was born. Before I knew it, it was time to take him to school with Oliver and to head to work myself. Just like Oliver, Kellan wasn’t going to make this an easy task.
If you recall, I returned to work after eleven weeks with Oliver. The next week Oliver came down with RSV and was hospitalized for four days when he was twelve weeks old.
Sunday, November 14 at 5:00 PM we heard the first bark. In shock I asked Keith if the noise came from Kellan and it had. We hoped it was nothing serious and nervously went about our evening. At midnight, Kellan woke up to eat. He was congested, which has been the norm since the day he was born. However, he was also barking like a seal when he would inhale. We quickly called the doctor and they suspected he had croup. By 1:00, Kellan and I were headed to the ER and Keith stayed home with our soundly sleeping Oliver. The doctor had asked if Kellan was blue and we knew if that was the next step we weren’t going to sit around the house waiting for it to happen. The ER staff was excellent and they took great care of Kellan. He received a breathing treatment and steroids to reduce the swelling in his vocal chords and larynx. They also took chest x-rays and nasal cultures to eliminate the possibility of pneumonia, RSV, influenza and a few other things that slip my mind. He was diagnosed with Croup. Kellan was a perfect patient and enjoyed an evening of sleeping in his Mommy’s arms while a cool ventilator moistened the air he was breathing. Several hours later he had shown great improvement but they kept him for further observation since he was so young. Keith was up an at ‘em bright and early Monday morning and had Oliver at school when they opened at 6:30 AM. Oliver thought that it was odd that Kellan and Mommy were no where to be found but that didn’t delay his quest to see meet his friends at school for breakfast. With a quick Starbucks stop, Keith was at the hospital in no time. The rest of the morning was uneventful, fortunately. The nursing staff was great and they even brought us breakfast. They released Kellan at 10:30 AM with a prescription for an oral steroid for him to take that night. Through the day he continued to improve and the bark was long gone. It truly does sound like a seal barking, just as I had heard of. I would be perfectly fine not hearing that noise again, ever. The ER doctor said that he had the worst case of Croup that he had ever seen in such a young child. The nurse said that it was good that we came in when we did or it may have gotten much worse and he would have had to be admitted into the hospital.
Just like Oliver, Kellan is proving to be a crowd pleaser. He smiled and charmed the nurses and staff and they all commented on how cute and calm he was. I knew that he must have been the talk of the ER when the daytime nurse commented that she heard he arrived in cute yellow ducky PJ’s. This amazed me since she was the third nurse with us and he had only worn those PJ’s for the first 15 minutes we were there before we had him stripped down for tests.
It has now been over a week since our trip to the ER. Kellan was good as new by Tuesday morning and he tackled his first at school and I tackled my first day back to work. Every day he seems to enjoy school more and more and he is winning over his teachers with his smile and giggles. We are so very thankful that he is OK and it wasn’t worse than it was. We are also thankful that Oliver has taught us the ways of parenting and we are much more seasoned, relaxed, and appropriately reactive. Here’s to hoping for an uneventful winter with healthy kids and no more hospital visits.
No comments:
Post a Comment