The Pay Off

Well hell in a handbag it was quite the eventful weekend here at Casa Virus. Henry was recovering from a viral infection with the added bonus of croup. He’s a crouper, which is not to be confused with a croupier. In fact I would much rather that he was a croupier. Henry was a preemie who was forever on the puffers and nebulizer's and all that fun stuff that is included with a kid with respiratory problems.
When he was six months old he contracted RSV which landed him in hospital for two nights. Even though we had private coverage he was placed in quarantine in an RSV ward room. Picture this if you will. Four babies and four parents sleeping in the same room. We lucky parents had plasticky chairs to “sleep in”. Please keep in mind that as therapy the children are given a nubulizer (gas) of a drug which helps open their airways and as an added bonus raises their heart rate so they are over stimulated. So basically my baby at 1:00 am was lying on his back in an iron crib kicking his legs as if running a marathon and apparently I had to try and keep him quiet. This is a task akin to cleaning the Augean stables.

I asked his pediatrician if he caught RSV because he may be asthmatic or if he as asthmatic because of the RSV. He was honest and said, “We really have no clue”. Super. Henry then began to get the croup regularly. Croup is an upper respiratory viral infection which affects the voice box and basically makes your kid wake up at 2:00 am barking and whistling with the scariest cough ever. We’ve learned to take him outside for drives in the middle of the night all bundled up so that the cool air will open his airways. The people at Tim Horton’s know of this phenomenon. Many a time I went through the drive thru at 3:00 am and they would say, “hey another croupy kid!” I guess I wasn’t alone.

It got so bad that we had to go to the hospital in the middle of the night so many times that our Dr. finally prescribed us Dexamethasone which is a strong steroid that is usually only given by Doctors. At least we now had this thing under control. That is until last Friday.
Yes Chloe has now discovered the joys of croup. Four hours after being in a pediatric clinic they gave us the Dexamethasone and we immediately came home and gave it to her. One minute later she threw it all up. Aaaaaaaarrggggggh. So we had another sleepless night and 2 hours in a clinic to get another prescription.

I know one hour doesn’t sound like a very long time to wait for a pharmacist to fill a prescription but when one has a crying, coughing toddler it is an eternity. I was so tired of baby wrangling at this point that I parked her stroller right beside the pharmacy check out. I gave Chloe a kiss and whispered, “Okay baby scream your head off”. She was spectacular with the sobbing and coughing and back arching. Guess who had their prescription ready in the next two minutes?

So yes, all things considered we are getting back to normal after a week of two very sick kidlets. At one point both of them were crying simultaneously and if I recall correctly, Chloe was so upset that she was actually rubbing her face into the carpet. My husband looked at me wide eyed and said “Exactly when does the pay off begin?”

It already has but sometimes we are too tired to notice.