The word doesn't really sound anywhere near as frightening as the disease can prove to be. In particular, when it hits one of your children, and especially if your children are younger than three, when it can be deadly.
Saturday morning.
Liam had woken with incredibly large (yes, disgusting) amounts of thick, green mucous streaming down from his nose, after having been perfectly fine the night before. It really didn't make sense that he got that sick that quickly.
...and that was the good news.
The reason it was the good news is because it meant that the virus which manifests itself as croup had hit him, but his body was strong enough to resist, and turn it into a bad cold.
Morgan, on the other hand, had woken with no symptoms of anything.
She seemed fine.
By the end of the day on Saturday, she was clearly not.
As the day progressed, Morgan started to get what seemed to be a hoarse throat. By evening, she was what Janne and I refer to as 'rattling'. Morgan, since birth, and (we feel) because the twins were early, has always had a noisy respiratory system. However, on this occasion it sounded like her lungs were filling up with fluid.
We would find out Sunday that they were not - although that wouldn't feel like good news.
Saturday night, while Liam still was dealing with the streaming thick green stuff, Morgan had started to sound like she was having a lot of difficulty breathing. When we put her to bed, she wanted almost immediately to get into bed, rather than cavort around the room in her usual 'not yet' manner. About half an hour later, she was crying herself awake, afraid of her own inability to take a full breath.
Now, I'll give you this -
We are freaks when it comes to parenting our children. We are overprotective, and prone to panic at the drop of a hat. But we always think things through after our initial panic, talk (or argue) it out, and then act.
Our reaction was to set up a humidifier in her room.
As it turned out, it was completely the wrong thing to do.
Since this was still Saturday overnight, and we weren't yet convinced that we couldn't handle it ourselves, we would wait until morning, re-assess, and then - if it was worse - we'd take her to a walk-in clinic or hospital emergency. All of this meant that we had yet to find out that the diagnosis was croup.
Neither Janne nor I thought about croup, because to the best of our memories, neither of us, or anyone in our families, ever had croup, so we had no experience with it.
The worst thing for croup, as we found out on Sunday - when we were now scared for our daughter's life - is warm, moist air. Cold, moist air is one of the best things to relieve croup symptoms, but the virus which causes croup thrives in warm, moist air.
Morgan was waking up through Saturday night and into Sunday almost hourly - crying, afraid, hardly able to breathe - and sounding like a barking seal. It was scaring the Hell out of us, so I can only imagine how scary it was for her. We decided to make sure she was either lying on her side or on top of one of us, and not on her back, as we were still thinking that it was her lungs, and that being on her back would be the most difficult position for her to be able to breathe. I spent from 5am until 6am on the reclining chair in Morgan's room with her on my chest. She slept well, and seemed to be breathing a little easier.
As soon as we had the babies fed and ready on Sunday morning, we got them into a walk-in clinic.
Bad news.
We live in a small town where they've already closed down one walk-in recently, so everybody that would have gone there was now in the same waiting room with us. Our wait could be two hours, from what we gathered from the people around us. Liam was restless, while Morgan lay prone and weak in my arms.
After a considerable amount of time had passed, Janne asked me to please go back up to the desk, where they had a sign suggesting that if a condition of a patient worsens while waiting, to let them know.
Well, they took one look at Morgan, and we were in a consultation room within five minutes. Had a wonderful doctor, whose name I unfortunately did not get, and who referred us directly to Brantford General Emergency, and to a Dr. Malik, a pediatrician in Brantford who's considered one of the best.
Aside from the fact that maybe we should have gone to Brantford General first, we were in good shape. Although, if Morgan was older than her slightly less than two years, and could voice her own opinion, I'm sure her version of how things were going would be considerably different.
She was still suffering, afraid, and already tired of the number of people poking and prodding her, sticking things in her ears (which she really hates), putting a cold stethoscope against her skin...and all of these people strangers to her.
In came Dr. Malik, a wonderful woman who made Morgan feel as 'at ease' as possible by first examining her stuffed toy frog, to make sure it was okay. However, since this day started pretty early, and she had very little sleep through the night, and it was now well into the afternoon, Morgan was still pretty close to inconsolable. She wasn't interested in the food we brought with us, and was drinking very little. Luckily, though, our little girl wasn't dehydrated - which can be another really bad symptom to accompany croup.
The air passage through her throat was really tight, and the sounds she was making were even worse than earlier in the day. She cried with the pain brought by each one, but crying made her bark even more, which increased the pain. We were indeed at the right place at the right time, but her symptoms couldn't go away fast enough for any of us.
In the meantime, Liam (who was still draining the lovely green stuff) was getting more restless by the moment. The hospital was not the ideal environment for an almost-two-year old who still had most of his energy, although this was definitely the longest he'd had to subsist on just snacks and without a solid meal that I can remember, so he was starting to also get cranky as his restlessness increased. I took him out to the car so he could nap while we waited for another round of epinephrine for Morgan. The doctor wanted to observe her until she was satisfied the treatments had gotten our little girl through the worst of it. Janne said to me, "If I'm not out in half an hour, come looking."
About 45 minutes later, I woke poor little Liam back up again, and carried the guy back in to where we left our female half. Janne and Morgan were still sitting in exactly the same position in exactly the same seat beside the same bed. (Bed #7, which I'm sure we'll always remember. Fear will do that to your memory, won't it?) Janne explained that the doctor wanted to do another round, maybe two, of treatment, before letting her go - so I took Liam home for a meal, and waited for her to call.
By this time, Liam appeared dejected, and had that glazed-over look that comes with a little bit too much new information and a few too many new experiences in one day. I'm pretty proud of how well-behaved he remained through the whole process. His mother and father had gotten impatient long before he did, and we should have known better. He was a trooper.
While I was home, and feeding Liam, was the toughest time for me. Our family - and the twins, in particular - are not separated very often, and if they are, it isn't for very long. Myself and Liam being home without Morgan and Janne felt awful, and I missed the comfort of our little family. I'm sure Liam felt it, too.
No one felt it more than Morgan, however.When Janne called to have Liam and I come back to pick them up, I got the two of us ready as quickly as possible. As I pulled up to the Emergency entrance, I waved to Morgan as she looked toward the car through the glass, and she - with visibly much more energy than she had had for the last 24 hours or more - pointed at me, and I could read her lips saying, "Daddy!"
Best feeling in the world.
As Janne was trying to put Morgan into her car seat, she got out of Mommy's grasp for a moment, and leaned into Liam's face. She got about an inch away from his nose, and whispered, in her still-somewhat-raspy little voice, "Nyna!" (which is how, at this point, she pronounces his name).
Our world was getting back to normal....but Sunday was a very long day.
