Croup

Last night was one of the most terrifying nights of my life.  If you've ever sat and listened to your 2 year old struggling to breath for 6 hours in the middle of the night then you will know what I'm talking about.  I was up with Chloe until 3:30 in the morning.  She had a high fever and I couldn't get it to come down.  Usually the children's Tylenol and Ibuprofen work wonders on her fevers, but last night she stayed hot all night.  I pulled the fan into her room, and I had a wet washcloth and was trying to get her cooled off.  Finally at 3:30 in the morning we went to rock in the rocking chair and she finally fell asleep.  I put her in my bed since it was much cooler in my bedroom than in her bedroom and grabbed some blankets and my body pillow and fell asleep on the floor around 4am.  I got roughly 4 hours of sleep and Chloe was freaking out when she woke up.  I took her to the urgent care center because I was so freaked out.  She is fine.  She has Croup which is a virus but it isn't deadly and it's pretty common.  The wheezing usually lasts 3-4 days so we should be on the back side of it, maybe one more day.  She was given a steroid which is the only medicine they have to treat Croup which they said doesn't necessarily make it better, but makes sure it doesn't get worse.  They tested her for strep too, but that was negative.  They said the best thing to do is keep her cool, and put a humidifier in her room, to keep her in an Air Conditioned room.  That makes sense with why she deteriorated so much last night.  The kids rooms are pretty warm in the summer.  The AC doesn't work well on the second floor and they don't sleep if the windows are open.  Often it doesn't cool off anyway until the early morning so opening the windows is no good until about 2am.  So when I kept her in her room, it aggravated her Croup and when it finally cooled off and we went into my bedroom (we keep the window open all night) she did much better in the cooler air.  They also said that Croup is usually a winter sickness.  Now that I have been given peace of mind I just have to wait for the bill and hope it isn't too high.  When Lily went to the ER to get a staple in her head it cost $700.  Let's hope that treating croup at the urgent care center is much cheaper.  If it had been a regular week day I could have taken her to the doctor and paid a $30 copay.  *sigh* Insurance stinks.

I didn't get breakfast before I rushed out the door this morning.  I grabbed a peach on my way out, but I wasn't too hungry.  I snacked on a couple nuts on the way home.  When I got home I cooked 2 eggs and heated up some vegetables.  It tasted great.  I ran out of pre cooked potatoes yesterday, but I really enjoyed the green beans and sugar snap peas that I had made a few days ago.  After breakfast we went upstairs and Chloe read the books while I played my flute.  I really love playing my flute.  I just asked Chloe every so often if she wanted me to play more or if I was done and if she said I should play more music for her I played more and when she said that she was done, I put my flute away.  I got to play for a good hour, maybe a little longer before Chloe said it was time to do something else.

The afternoon went by slowly, despite getting a two hour nap with Chloe.  I'm glad that Matt was able to play with Lily a bunch today, I'm glad he was home.  He is always home on Sunday so in a way that was good timing because I could focus on Chloe and he could play with Lily.  I grilled up some salmon with cauliflower and Brussels sprouts for dinner and made some cilantro lime rice.  The two things I want to introduce this week are rice and oats.  I don't expect to have any problems with either of them.  So tonight I thought rice would go better with fish than oats so that is what I added.

It was really good and Matt kept raving about how good it was, so that was awesome.  He has caught on that I'm making vegetables with every meal and tonight he asked what vegetables we are having with dinner.  This dinner was right up his alley: meat, rice and vegetables.  I also got to grill in the rain, so that was fun.  It was sprinkling a little, and it was much nicer than going out there in 90 degree weather to cook in the heat.  Much nicer.  I spent much of the evening (about 4:50-6:45) cooking, eating and cleaning.  Despite Matt being home all day I didn't get to spend any time with him.  That was pretty sad, I won't be able to do much with him until next weekend now.  In the morning I went to the urgent care and he went to church.  In the afternoon Chloe and I fell asleep which was much needed.  And when we woke up an hour later I was making dinner and Matt was watching the kids, and after dinner he went off to a Priesthood session at church.

Chloe is doing much better this evening, her fever is gone.  I think the medicine the doctor gave her helped a lot because there was a definite improvement throughout the day.  She still went to bed early, around 7:45 (very early considering she took a nap today) and I put the humidifier in her room.  Lily was a bit harder to get to bed.  She hasn't been getting much attention from me the past two days because of how sick Chloe has been, so I am going to make sure she gets some one on one time tomorrow.

It was hard not to emotionally eat today and I probably ended up eating too many nuts but eating a few too many nuts is much better than binging on chocolate.  Positive changes.