Pneumonia and Croop

I am going to re-cap my living nightmare to everyone that is wondering what is going on and if Rysa is ok. No pictures . . . I would have got some if we would have stayed til today but we got to go home last night!


On Tuesday morning Rysa woke up with a fever at 5:00 AM. She has NEVER had a fever in her 14 months of life. I gave her some tylenol and the fever stayed away until about noon so I just figured she was teething or something. Throughout that day she started coughing and getting a little wheezy but not too bad. At about 7:30 we called a neighbor to help give her a blessing. I don't remember what was said in the blessing because I was too focused on Rysa but it worked for us. She started breathing better and acting better. The next morning (yesterday) she woke up with a major fever again of 103 . . . her average temp is 97 so this was SUPER high. I couldn't really get it to go down. This was at 6:30 AM. I had a few choices . . . go to the ER, wait til 8:00 and go to the insta care, wait til 8:30 and go to the clinic by my house, or wait til 9:00 to go see her pediatrician. So, I chose wait til 8:00 and go to the insta care.

When we got to the instacare they had to give her a breathing treatment and then do chest x-rays. That was the saddest thing I have ever seen. They put her in this contraption with her hands above her head then lock her in so she can't move. That was not fun. The dr. looked at her x-rays and she had pneumonia AND croop. This is a little discerning given the fact that the two are not normally combined. They could only treat one and then treat the next after the first was treated. The dr. had us do a round of steroids to decrease the inflamed bronchial tubes but she didn't respond so we did a different breathing treatment. Still . . . no response so we were sent over to the hospital to visit with her ped.

When we got to the hospital Rysa had fallen asleep in the 10 blocks it takes from insta to hospital. She was calm and breathing much better but because of the x-rays we still had to be admitted. She had breathing treatments 3 times, every 2 hours. and was started on an antibiotic. The hospital stay was the worst, along with the breathing treatments. She only did one really good and that was because she was sleeping LOL. She was hooked up to 4 different wires and could only walk like 5 feeet away. If she walked further, she would fall down, unplug the wires, and then her monitors would beep as if she had died. It was not fun, I was constantly plugging her back in.

They brought us dinner around 7:00 and she was acting normal again. Playing having a blast, eating, and breathing fine. I had gotten sick of the wires so I asked the nurse if we could unplug them for an hour until she went to bed and they said yes so we played and played and played. At about 7:45 the respitory therapist came in to check on her and she was all clear. She asked if we were staying overnight and I said "I sure hope not, but it looks that way" she went out into the hall and our dr. was out there. She told him that Rysa was doing much better and we could go home. So, he came in and sent us home. My prayers had been answered. I just wanted her to be able to sleep in her own bed. We got home around 8:30 last night. I hope we never have to do that again!