Reagan's first trip to the emergency room is not one of the milestones that I was looking forward to in her early years, and didn't expect for Reagan to go to the hospital for something other than her birthday last July, as early as a 5-month old! Reagan was sniffling and had a stuffed-up nose all week, probably thanks to her parents who got sick the week before, when it started with Mommy who got sick by one of her high school students. Another high school in the area, Alcoa, had to cancel school for a few days last week because nearly all of the students and teachers were out sick. Something has been going around down here, and I hated that Reagan caught some of it!
So, after her day care teachers called me Friday afternoon at 4:00 and told me that she had a "barking cough" and that it was probably croup, I came by to get her a little early. One of the teachers said to me, "I'm not telling you what to do, but... if I were you, I would take Reagan to the emergency room."
We couldn't decide what to do, because we didn't think that her cough at home was bad, but we definitely noticed a "new cough" since Thursday afternoon. I already called Reagan's pediatrician and they couldn't get her in for an appointment Friday afternoon when I tried to schedule one after the day care teacher had called me. I still can't believe they didn't let me squeeze her in for an appointment! She's a little, fragile 5-month old who might have a serious cough that leads to trouble in breathing!!! Of course, they said, take her to the emergency room if she can't breathe well. The day care said we should take her to the emergency room at the East Tennessee Children's Hospital downtown.
We definitely were going to take her if we needed to, but she wasn't exactly having trouble breathing in our opinion, so we didn't know if we could wait one evening to take her to the pediatrician Saturday or just go ahead and make the drive downtown on Friday night and get her looked at. We were both tired after a long day at work, it was far, and we were afraid that we'd get stuck in a room full of a bunch of sick kids (which we did...) and that wouldn't help Reagan get over her cough, but we decided to go because I couldn't forgive myself if it were something serious that needed to be looked at Friday night and if we waited too long to do something about it. In any case, as first-time parents, at least we would learn what to do next time in this situation.
We are both now very happy that we went ahead and took Reagan to the emergency room. Her cough only got worse on the drive to the hospital. When we arrived into the lobby of the emergency room at East Tennessee Children's Hospital, my eyes widened like saucers! It was a scene! I saw a room full of children, from infants to teenagers, along with their parents, and they were coughing, sneezing, sleeping on a chair, sleeping on a parent's shoulder, holding an icepack to one's head (someone's brother had hit him in the head with a bat, from what I heard the mother say), holding a gauze pad to one's finger (one boy had "fallen on a knife" that fell of his desk at home, I heard), crying, yelling and many were wearing the white face masks that you saw all of the Ebola doctors and patients in Africa wearing in the news from this past fall.
Below is a poor photo I took with my iPhone of the "sick room." I did not want to act creepy and have people notice that I was taking a photo of a lobby full of ill children and their parents, but the other side of this lobby just stunned me. I was wondering if David and I had made the right decision to bring Reagan here because germs would just floating everywhere!
Unfortunately but typically, we waited almost two hours before we even got checked in when they took Reagan's temperature, weighed her, took her blood pressure, etc. By the way, she now weighs 6.98 kilograms, or 15 pounds, 6 ounces, as an almost 5-month old baby. They said that Reagan definitely had a bad case of croup, what is described as the "barking cough" that they heard at Day Care, as well as trouble breathing and a swelling of the vocal cords. I told the nurses that the rumor was from the front desk secretary that the wait was 2 hours and asked if we could get moved up the list. She said that she would try.
We returned to the lobby full of sick children and adults and fed Reagan a few bottles of milk, then she took a nap on my shoulder as David and I watched the Disney movies that they were playing on the lobby TVs. Then, an hour later, they called us into a room to see a nurse. We were in the lobby waiting next to a mother with an ill 2-month infant, and it just broke my heart to see these infants and even "older babies" up to 16 years sick in this room full of people. Many of us waited for hours. I don't even want to think about how long the wait will be to see a doctor in the future if our health care system changes............
So, this second nurse checked out Reagan and asked us to help hold Reagan down on the bed while the nurse used this vacuum utensil to suck out all of the snot and germs in Reagan's nose, sucking out of one nostril while squirting saline solution into the other nostril. It was a much fancier and probably more effective version of our favorite Swedish "Nose Frida" tool at home that we use to suck out Reagan's boogers.
Below is the container where Reagan's mucus went into after the nurse sucked it our of her nose with the vacuum machine. If you look closely, you can see the amount of mucus liquid that fills the bottom of the container. It was a lot! Reagan definitely did not enjoy the process of sucking it out, but I'm sure she felt so much better afterwards!
Ultimately, the doctor came to our room, checked out Reagan, even her ears to make sure that she did not have an ear infection on top of all of this, and she said that the nurse would give Reagan some steroid syrup that would last 72 hours and hopefully get rid of this croup.
We waited around for another half hour until the nurse came by with the steroid syrup. David tried to find something good on TV in the meantime.
We were all tired. We left for the children's hospital at 6:00 PM and ended up staying until almost Midnight. Reagan kept on falling asleep on my shoulder.
Eventually, the nurse came by and gave Reagan the steroid syrup. David said he got a similar steroid last week when he saw the doctor for his bad cough and cold, but he unfortunately got a steroid shot in the butt instead of the syrup.
The nurse told us that to help clear out Reagan's lungs and give her some fresh air, that we could bring her outside for a few minutes to breathe in the cool air, or even go in front of the open freezer door. This is very similar to what David's mom told us earlier in the night about how she would bring her children into a shower with cold water, not putting the kids under the water, but just having them breathe in the cold air to help breathe better. David and I are learning new things from nurses and our moms every day!
We just continued to wait (for another hour) until they gave us the discharge papers for us to leave. After a while of not hearing from anybody, we decided to go ahead and pack up Reagan and start leaving the room so we could either get someone's attention or we would just proceed to the front desk and get going to go home.
We both still had a sense of humor after a long day of work and several hours of emotional trauma for baby and parents.
David laughs as I take pictures of him, not at the fact that we had been in the hospital with a sick baby for hours. Hey, I had nothing else to do besides comfort a baby and take pictures while she was sleeping during our time in the hospital!
We finally drove back home with a healthier baby (we hoped), heated up some soup from Kroger's and headed to bed. I snipped off Reagan's wrist band, that they actually gave me to wear, because she was sleeping when they wanted to put it on her, but decided not to wake her. Funny that this baby band actually fit my tiny wrist perfectly.
Rah Rah slept well through the night and, although she hardly napped on Saturday for me while Daddy started the Saturday early with work at the golf course, she was coughing a lot less frequently and did not have nearly as much mucus clogged up in her nose.
I gave her two doses of Tylenol for infants and just hugged and loved on her all day!
My stack of exams that needed to be graded and our disgustingly gross apartment that needed to be cleaned were both just going to have to wait until later! This little girl is far more important! We're hoping that she'll be a super healthy girl by the time we get ready to leave for Wisconsin early next week for Christmas!
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