Trip to Urgent Care

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...