Home From The Hospital

Cora is doing fine, but for those of you who have not heard, we took her to the emergency room early EARLY Saturday morning. We had taken her to the doctor earlier in the week b/c her breathing sounded pretty raspy and they diagnosed her with a mild case of croop (spelling?). She had been sleeping ok during the night and was acting fairly normal during the day so we thought it would just pass. At about 4:30am Saturday Shawn heard her struggling to breath. He went in to get her and her poor chest was sunken in because she couldn't get any air. She seemed very scared, as were we. We took her in the bathroom and ran the shower for steam but after about 3 seconds realized it was more serious than that. Since we have a hospital 2 blocks away, we jumped in the car and drove her to the emergency room. Her oxygen level was in the 70's so we had to hold her down with an oxygen mask, which she hated. Then they gave her a cool breathing mist the same way. They gave her a shot of steroids to help the swelling of her trachea and larynx, and that seemed to work fairly quickly. They eventually had to get blood and put an IV in. They tried to do it one arm but couldn't get a vein, so they went to get blood from her heel. That didn't work either, so they went to the other arm, which worked fine. We sat in the ER for about 6 hours, until they got us a room in the pediatric unit. They continued to give her the steroid shot every 12 hours to keep the swelling down. Her oxygen levels remained in the 90s for the rest of the weekend, but if it had gone down into the 70s again they would have transferred us to the another hospital with a pediatric ICU. The doctor had us stay overnight on Saturday to be sure that Cora did not have another episode, which we were thankful for, because we were scared to take her home. She did just fine though, and we are back home as of Sunday evening. She did fairly well throughout her entire hospital stay, it was just very difficult for her to understand why everyone who came in the room was poking and prodding at her. She was quite restless...she would cuddle with me and Shawn some of the time but was completely inconsolable a lot of the time. She's doing a little better now that we're home. Her breathing sounds so much better but she's EXTREMELY sensitive and irritable, to say the least! We have liquid steroids that we will continue to give to her once a day for 3 days, keep a cool mist humidifier in her room and follow up with our doctor. We're doing our best to make her as comfortable as possible. Sorry for the novel. We will update if there are any major changes. I know you're all thinking I'm weird for bringing my camera but I had to document her first hospital visit.

This is Cora with her very best grumpy face. I think it's pretty good.

Snacking in her crib.

Sleeping in her cool mist/oxygen tent.

The fun little oxygen mask which, dispite its appearance was NOT fun at all.

A moment of happiness...these came few and far between.

Being happy with Daddy.