We almost made it to one year emergency room-visit-free for Sidney. The last time we visited our local children’s hospital, Hasbro’s Children’s Hospital, was March 12, 2012. Since Jackson was getting too much attention with his mini-man cold around here, Sidney needed to up the ante and get in on the croup action. Here’s a brief timeline of last weekend’s medical drama:
Thursday afternoon- take Jackson to pediatrician because he seems so sick (diagnosis: just a cold), Sidney, however, has croup and is prescribed steroids.
Thursday night- fill the steroids, Sid’s breathing gets worse so I give her an albuterol breathing treatment. No sleep.
Friday midday- call the pediatrician to ask if I should give Sidney another breathing treatment since her stridor has gotten worse. Dr M tells us she needs to see Sidney. I drag both kids to the office for our 2pm appointment. Bad news, we need to go to the ER.
Friday afternoon- show up at the ER.
Life with a dramatic brother in the ER
For the first hour, I thought she might be admitted but we ended up getting a dose of decadron (fast acting steroid) to open up her airway then were able to go home. The ER doctors called Dr M, who assured them that if she got worse I could be counted on to take her back to the hospital. Long story short, excellent care by Hasbro but we *still* don’t know why her airway closes up like that when she gets sick.
I’ll be calling our awesome ENT doctor on Monday to update him, but I’m not comfortable with scoping her to find out what’s going on (yet). Maybe we will get some answers, maybe not. In the meantime I’m going to work on building up her immunity as much as I can and keeping the rest of our house healthy. After a pretty scary weekend (and day 4 of steroids), Sidney is feeling much better and practiced scooting around the house on our snowy Sunday.
I hope you had a nice weekend and one that was less eventful than ours!
awwww… sidney.
they have no idea why this happens to her? hopefully it’s something she grows out of. do you give her vitamins at all? i’ve gotten the girls on a vitamin that has zinc & echnicea in it, too, and that combined with the elderberry syrup has really helped with their immunities. the syrup we have is ages 2 & up (b/c it’s super concentrated) but i wonder if you give her half the dose, it would help keep her from getting sick. this stuff is like a miracle worker around here. I used to give them the sambucus kids one, but it doesn’t compare to the one we have now. the elderberry amounts are much higher in this one and i swear by it, combined with the zinc & echinacea. does she like smoothies at all? if so, make some with a ton of kale in them (just add fruit and the kale isn’t detectable in the taste). all good immunity boosters. all of which you already know! 
So scary! I hope she’s feeling better and that you get some answers!
Love Jen’s immunity boosting ideas – we make kale chips for the kids – they love them!
I also like L-Lysine to build the immune system. We drink a lot of green tea with some honey, too.
Above all, I’m a crazy lady about washing hands and enough sleep!
Hope Sidney’s feeling better!
Leah DeCesare recently wrote Music for Newtown