We made our first trip to the Urgent Care at mommy's work on Saturday night. Owen has still been congested and not getting any better and had since developed a cough. Saturday afternoon he started grunting and retracting a little bit and working entirely too hard to breathe. So - after talking to a wonderful nurse friend, we made the trip to Urgent Care. When we got there, they were sure it was RSV and ran the test. Nope - not RSV. They then asked if anyone in the family had asthma - I told them yes and they gave him a treatment which did not seem to help. This was followed by a chest x-ray to rule out pneumonia, another treatment with only saline which only made things worse, a dose of oral steroids, and finally a racemic epi. The racemic seemed to be the only thing that helped. The doctor said that he had croup and we finally got to go home at 4:00 AM. My good friend was upstairs working that night and saving us a bed just in case we needed it. But we were very thankful to go home and not need that bed - even though mommy might have slept a little better if we had stayed...
Yesterday he started grunting again so we made a trip to the doctor. His doctor agreed that it was croup but said that he likes to give a big dose of steroids to knock it out. So he put him on prednisone and now we just wait and see...
I have always been one to not complain about anything so as not to make anyone mad. I am the type that gets very irritated when someone complains about their food at a restaurant. I am learning, however, that when it comes to your child, sometimes you have to complain. The nurse that we saw yesterday did not take his O2 sat. I thought it was kind of odd seeing as we were in for respiratory symptoms, but being myself, I didn't say anything. When the doctor came in, he was talking about croup and saying how kids usually saturate well - which is very true in his case because his sat was 98%. At the time I wasn't really thinking and thought maybe he was looking at the report from urgent care to get that reading. But after I left, I was thinking about it and realized that he had to be reading stats from that day - and that meant the nurse just wrote something down without taking the time to actually do it. And then I was really upset and of course it was 5:00 so there would be no one there. So - I was very proud of myself. First thing this morning I called and asked to talk to whoever was in charge of the nurses. I had to leave a message but am praying to say the right thing when she calls back. It is terrible patient care to not even check the O2 sat of a 2 month old with respiratory distress. And then the doctor confirmed his diagnosis with this reading... How do I know that his sats were not something too low and that he would have needed to be admitted? Anyway - I am learning and going to have the guts to say what I need to say when she calls back.
I will leave you with some pics from waiting in Urgent Care. He discovered his hands while we were sitting and waiting and it was pretty cute...
