Croup

What a night last night was! Exactly at the moment that Ron and I headed to bed, we heard Tehilla gasping for breath. Tzviel is an asthmatic with chronic croup, so we are no stranger to the sounds of croup and stridor. We quickly grabbed her and ran to our freezer and stood there, until she caught her breath. Then we wrapped a blanket around her and went outside for about 15 minutes, until her breathing didn't sound so sharp. We waited and then put her back to bed, only to repeat that episode 5 minutes later.

We couldn't get a hold of our cardiac nurse, so we called one of our PICU nurses, who is also a friend. She suggested that we go to the ER for an inhalation treatment. I am always hesitant to go the ER, for fear of exposing Tehilla to something far worse. We took Tehilla's saturation and it was ranging between 68-71. Her baseline is 74-78. For Tehilla, that's still not completely awful, as long as she is breathing regularly and there are no other signs of distress. We waited and took her saturation again. It was 75.

I sat outside with Tehilla for a little longer and then put her to bed. I then stayed up for an hour to make sure that she was okay.

Of course, Tzviel then had a croup episode. He's nearly 5 and refusing to take his daily puffer. So, it was a long night.

We went to the walk-in clinic this morning and had one of the on-call doctors check both of them. Tzviel received a stern talk about how important it was that he take his puffer. He hung his cute little head in shame and nodded obediently.

Tehilla is being put on an inhalation treatment, even though she sounds almost completely fine, as a precaution for 3 days.

On Wednesday, we have our cardiology appointment. We will find out if this will force a major delay in a catheter and surgery.