Croup!

I hate croup. I really, REALLY hate it.

Kisa came down with croup this weekend for the third or fourth time in her short life, but this was the worst case she has ever had before. I spent Friday morning at the pediatrician and Sunday morning at the ER trying to figure out what was wrong (I should have known croup when I saw it, but I guess I just hoped it would be something else). The ER doctor informed me that Kisa has smaller airways than the average toddler, which is probably why her lungs get so easily inflamed and why almost every cold she has ever caught has ended in croup. She is an unusually healthy child, so the reality is the only real illness we've ever dealt with is croup. And we've done it several times in the last year and a half.

In short, he told me to learn how to deal with it because it is the way her body responds to illness. Kids grow out of "croup" as they get older and their airways enlarge, but she will probably always be prone to respiratory illness and will get coughs more often than her peers. This is a wonderful trait she has inherited from her daddy.

Luckily, the older you get the less dangerous respiratory illnesses become (well... to a point), so hopefully there will come a time when her coughs are just coughs and not cause for alarm.

However. It is still a really scary and annoying illness. It's basically just the common cold settling in a kid's lungs, but it causes a cough and phlegm that can clog your airways and make you choke/asphyxiate. There's nothing you can do to treat it except push steroids (which help decrease inflammation and open up your airways) and ibuprofen to keep irritation down. Cough medicines don't work at all.

But probably the number one reason I hate croup is because it is so deceptive. You wake up in the morning to a basically healthy kid and think, "really? Did I just imagine them almost suffocating last night? They seem FINE right now." All day they play happily and seem barely bothered by a slight cough. You question the decision you made at 3am in the morning to call the doctor when the office opens for the day. You think you must be past the worst of it, or maybe you were just overreacting. Then 8 or 9 pm rolls around and they are gagging and sputtering and your only option is to deal with it or pack them in the car and head to the ER... and you think, what the hell? THEY WERE JUST FINE.

So that is why I hate croup. Because no matter how many times I've dealt with it, despite knowing what it is and the symptoms and remedies, it is still surprisingly terrifying and stressful. Every single time.

Sigh.