Boo to Croup

Anna has been in the hospital for almost a week with a very severe case of croup. After a roller coaster of ups and downs she seems to be on the mend. We finally have Internet access so I'll try to update often here.

Today Anna is still on oxygen, although it's at a very low level. She is still very weak but wants to play. She has even cracked a couple of smiles. Her stridor (wheezing while breathing) returns when the oxygen is turned off, so it looks like it will at least another day until she will be considered for discharge.

Here's the basic recap for the past week. This is more for my benefit than anything else. All the days have run together.

Saturday: Anna wakes up without a voice, is a little grumpy, but still wants to play and have fun.

Sunday: Wakes up wheezing and we immediately know that she needs to see a doctor. We take her to an Instacare where she gets a dose of steroids. It seems to kick in and she's fairly happy until the evening. In the evening her stridor returns with avengence. After trying some home remedies to decrease the symptoms we take her back into Instacare. After a couple of rounds of recimic epinephrine treatments the doctor recommend a visit to Primary Children's Hospital via ambulance. We opt to drive Anna up ourselves. Jeff flies home to Denver for work. At the hospital Anna continues to worsen and freak out as many doctors and nurses poke and prod. Finally after a blessing from Grandpa Larry, we are admitted to the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit. Anna starts a regiment of recimic epi treatments every hour-hour and a half. With a constant cool mist by mask in between.

Monday: Anna remains in ICU with treatments. No improvement on Stridor, can't breath without cool mist and epi treatments. She has no voice and can only nod yes and no. Jeff flies back to Utah to be with Anna. Meanwhile, Isaac is carted back and forth to the hospitals so I can feed him. He refuses to take a bottle.

Tuesday: Anna starts to improve and goes several hours in between epi treatments. She gets steroids every six hours. She is released from PICU to the medical floor and seems to be really getting better. Still completely weak and exhausted.

Wednesday: More improvements. She goes 20 hours with out a treatment and by the afternoon the doctors are talking discharge. Still no voice, and a terrible cough, but stridor has decreased quite a bit. Anna is discharged about 8:00 pm. Yeah! Home to grandma Marlene's house.

Thursday: 2:00 am Anna wakes up with terrible stridor. Jeff and I try to take her out in the cold air to open her airways, with little success. In the morning we take her to a clinic and from there we are sent back to Primary Children's. She receives an epi with no improvement. This time we couldn't get away with driving ourselves, so Anna rode up on the "fire bus" as she calls it. Back to the ER and back to square one. This time Anna is put on Heliox, a mixture of helium and oxygen. Next we're sent back up to the PICU for more evaluation. No epi treatments. ENT docs come to do a throat scope and find what looks to be like a bacterial infection on top of the original viral infection that caused the croup. Antibiotics, steroids, and heliox continue throughout the day.

Friday: Anna is weaned off heliox and moves to just oxygen through a nose piece. (She had a mask for the heliox.) By afternoon the color to her face improves dramatically and she is speaking a little with whispers. By the evening we get to move out of PICU to a private room. Yeah!