One night, while living in Latvia, my son had a common cold. He went to bed to get some much needed rest and shortly after laying down he could not breathe. It started with an awful cough, sounded like a barking seal, and quickly he was not able to breathe and was starting to turn blue. I called an ambulance and and tried to communicate with my poor Latvian language skills that my son could not breathe. For some reason I forgot the word for breathe at that moment, but the woman an the phone heard my son's bark and desperate pleas for air. She instructed us to put him by an open window, it was winter and very cold. The cold air reduced the swelling in his airway long enough for the ambulance to arrive and administer some some drugs.
We spent the night in the hospital, but not admitted. They had a kind of hospital purgatory. You could get a bed and stay the night just to be safe and monitored, but not admitted to a room if it wasn't something major. I kind of like that system. My son gets the croup. Most kids make a lot of noise when they cough but it can be managed at home, but in a few kids the swelling gets bad and it makes it nearly impossible to breathe. Most kids grow out of it, usually by age 8. We had many more incidents of croup. It begins with laryngitis.
I always thought laryngitis was when you lost your voice, but a lot of the time it's an infection in the larynx like a common cold. My son has had a common cold that did not infecte his larynx and not had croup, he's also had the flu and had no croup.
Eventually we purchased a nebulizer and our doctor have us drugs and we were able to handle the croup on our own.
Last year we moved to Myanmar and only had to use the nebulizer once. After we leaving Myanmar, we traveled to Latvia for the summer and then to Thailand. During all that travel, and flight delays, and missed flights, we lost the nebulizer. Copenhagen maybe. Now we are in Thailand and my son gets sick and I hear the tell tale signs of that cough and no nebulizer. When it became apparent that it was only getting worse, we rushed him to the nearest hospital, and of course the most expensive. He was quickly given a nebulizer but not with the usual meds for treating croup. It worked ok, but not as quickly or as effectively. For croup we gave hime Dexamethasone and Epinephrine. He recieved Ventolin and Epinephrine. Mostly they didn't seem to understand what croup was or didn't believe me. They were confused by the drugs we used before.
They seemed to think it was asthma or allergies. One doctor told me they saw something in his x-ray, they other said the x-ray was clear. There is also a language barrier that make is more difficult to understand each other. They
kept him overnight. We had to choose what level of room we wanted. I picked the middle one. I had no idea the difference. It was a nice private room with snacks, a tea kettle, microwave, and fridge. We ordered food like from room service.
They wanted to keep him a second night, but his worst of his croup cough was always the first night and I could tell he was getting better. I, on the other hand had caught his cold and was feeling REALLY BAD.
They finally sent us home with a bag full of steroids to treat asthma, none of which I gave him. He's fine and back in school. Maybe it is asthma or allergies. If he doesn't outgrow the croup we'll have to look at other reasons. (Horses, not zebras) We purchased a new nebulizer (It looks like a monkey and it's so cute!) and have meds we know work and we'll stick to that.
Overall our experience in hospital was mostly positive. If anything they over cared for him and wanted to be extra cautious. I'll take that.
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