Reagan has croup. And it is not fun.
Her nose started running Thursday last week, and by Friday morning she was running a low-grade fever and had gobs of green goo coming out of her nose. I took her to our family doctor, but he had a colleague covering his practice for the day. That doctor told me that it was just a viral cold and that I should only treat her fever... no cold medicine whatsoever. By Saturday, she was sporting a nasty chesty barking cough and her fever kept climbing. This was pretty much the case all weekend. So, first thing Monday morning, we were back at the doctor's office. Our doctor agreed with me (I had already self-diagnosed her at home) that she had the croup. (For some reason I want to say the croup. Is it the croup, or just croup?!) He gave us a prescription for a very strong steriod elixir called Dexamethasone that is twenty times stronger than Cortisone and seven times stronger than Prednisone. He determined that since she is more susceptible to respiratory infections due to her having RSV as a baby that he needed to really shock her system with this steriod to open up her airways. He wanted her to take 75 mL's of it all at once. 75 ml's = 2.5 ounces = 1/3 cup = a whole heck of a lot for a little girl who hates to take medicine! The pharmacist suggested we add some Kool-Aid to it to disguise the nasty taste. We tried that and it didn't work. So then we added a little lemonade to it... still no luck. Before long, we had almost 10 ounces of medicine/juice that she was supposed to drink and she was flat refusing to even sip it. I phoned our doctor (this was at about 8:00pm on Monday night) and told him how much of a fiasco this medicine was creating, and he said for us to just toss it and try again the next day... he phoned a new prescription for the exact same large amount of nasty medicine and I picked it up first thing Tuesday morning from the pharmacist. The day before, I took ALL of Reagan's toys away and told her she couldn't have them back until she took her medicine. I added a new incentive to the mix on Tuesday... she could get all of her toys back AND she could get a new Barbie if she would take the medicine. She decided to give it a try. I didn't mix it with anything because after the debacle of mixing stuff the day before, I decided to just make her drink it straight so that we had less to get down. It took about half an hour of the tiniest sips I have ever seen in my life, but she finally managed to get about 90% of it down. The other 10% was all over me, her and the floor from when she spit it out after the first taste!
So now, my house is covered in toys once again, and Reagan is the proud owner of the new Barbie with the Barbie dog wash. Her Daddy decided to spoil her even more than I was planning! She's hanging in there with this croup mess. So far, she's not really a whole lot better, but I'm not sure if the steroid was supposed to work overnight. She's also doing the albuterol breathing treatments with our nebulizer machine. She had to do them quite often after she had RSV, so we purchased one to have on hand whenever we have respiratory troubles. She has finally quit fighting us when it comes time to do a mask, and she even asked to do one by herself this morning! She's napping now, so I'm heading off to do some housework and then hopefully catch a quick nap myself.
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Wow it surprises me how much she looks like ME in this picture. I hope my princess gets well soon. lets do an online chat tomorrow if she is feeling up to it.
I hate these times. Elijah is going through a nasty cough thing now too. We are nebbing him every 4 hours to see if we can keep it under control. Fun times! He fought us on the mask for 3 years, but now he sits down and does it without complaint. But~ we used to have to do the toy thing too.
I hope she feels better soon. Nothing worse than a sick kid, is there?
hey tiff- okay, i'm a momma with a nebulizer and two kids that have to use it every time they get sick. they've both had RSV and croup (i wanna say the croup too...i think that is how we southern girls have always heard it...i have no idea which way is the correct way). do you know about the steamy shower to help with the coughing for croup?? it works like a charm, usually. not just with croup...with any respiratory woes. it is usually a temp. fix but it will help to stop a major coughing spell (like the ones my kids always seem to have in the middle of the night). AND...with our nebulizer, we switched to the mouth tube since the kids are big enough to hold it in their mouths...they don't feel as suffocated as with the mask. hope that your little sweetie feels better soon:)
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