OK, so the last post was a little out of character. Plus, I didnt mention that the song was the theme from The Littlest Hobo, one of the favorite shows from my childhood days. Some people got it, others thought I wrote a song about a dog (Hee Hee).
The weekend didnt turn out like I planned. I had a self-created long weekend. I worked 10 hour days last week and took the friday off. Thursday night we rolled into Cowtown and just as we got there the little guy threw up the fries we had slipped him. We chalked that up to bad fast food and went about our thing on Friday. Friday night he didnt seem so hot and early in the morning I was awakened by my wife who said Jacob was having trouble breathing. I rocked the little guy to sleep but he would wake up frequently with really bad coughing. I awoke Cath and we decided to head to the Childrens hospital because after talking with family and friends we figured out he had croup. It was confirmed at the hospital and we were admitted into the ER there.
There were several heartbreaking times during this ordeal. The first being as we were preparing to go to the hospital, I was finally getting him to cheer up by playing with some balls with him. He loves balls.... its one of the few words in his repetoire. I had to drag him away from the balls to take him to the car and as we are leaving he is crying in a choked little voice and saying 'ball'! 'ball'! Then we get him to the Childrens Hospital and we cheer him up in the waiting room where there are a myriad of toys and activity stations (probably the best thing about the new hospital), only then we take him to a little room where there is nothing to do and people constantly come in and cause him nothing but pain and distress. Poor little guy.....
They have an oral steroid there but it takes 4 hours to kick in and in the meantime there is a kind of vaporizing treatment (cant remember what is in it). They have to hold a mask over the child's face for 7 minutes. Jacob cannot stand things near his face. He REALLY cant stand being held down or restrained in any way and he is extremely strong for his size. You can imagine how it went. I could see the terror in his eyes. He fought and screamed the entire time with all his strength. He didnt let up... not once. I really had to work hard to hold him. Not to mention it was one of the most emotionally painful things I've ever done.
In most cases, they only have to do the mask treatment once but either his croup was bad enough or he just didnt get enough, but we wound up having to do it again an hour later.... and again he fought. I am amazed at how strong and determined he is.... and stubborn. Thankfully the second round took hold and after a very long time of being in an uncomfortable little examination room (they really need to rethink their setup) we were able to take him home.
During that monitoring time, they were not able to take his vitals as the first site of anyone besides Cath and I getting close to him would upset him greatly. The nurse just gave up and came back after we got him to sleep.
A funny little side effect of the steroid? It makes the kid hyper! Saturday night we are wasted from no sleep and Jacob's running laps. It was good to see him active though.
He is doing better now and the rest of the weekend (such as it were) was just spent trying to recover. He still coughs and is more clingy than usual, but doesnt sound like a seal, which is good.
Nothing really adequately prepares you for this parenting gig....
1 comment:
Well said.
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