Nathan woke up Saturday morning at 5 am (nearly an hour earlier than normal) sounding like he had smoked a packet of cigarettes a day for the last 40 years.  His voice was very croaky and had the occasional cough.  I figured he was getting a cold, since Andrew had been feeling a bit flu-y earlier in the week.  The interesting thing was that one of the first things Nathan did was to run to the fridge, get the Panadol out of the fridge and ask for ‘medicine to feel better’.  He hadn’t done this since he was sick last time (a few months ago?) with a fever that lasted for 3 days.  Since I couldn’t work out what the problem was (besides the croaky voice) I put the Panadol back in the fridge and we got on with our day.

We were planning on going to Julie’s 40th birthday party that evening, and to my disappointment (and despite the early morning), Nathan slept just over an hour for his midday sleep.  I had no idea how we were going to manage an evening out with a toddler who hadn’t had enough sleep.  In the afternoon we noticed that Nathan had a slightly elevated temperature, and by 5 pm it was 38 degrees.  We decided to stay home in the evening and try to let Nathan have as much sleep as he could get in the hopes that he would be better this morning.

Nathan slept fitfully from 8 pm until midnight when he woke with a 39 degree fever and the worst cough I’ve ever heard.  It made it very difficult for Nathan (and anyone else, for that matter) to sleep.  He breastfed for hours as it was the only thing that seemed to calm him and he finally fell asleep in my arms and slept there for the rest of the night.  Unfortunately Nathan still had the horrible cough yesterday morning, and while he seemed happy enough in himself most of the time (he ate breakfast, played with grandma (who visited us for the weekend) and ran around giggling), the activity would set off coughing fits.  After a couple of hours he became more subdued, seemed to be having trouble breathing when distressed/coughing but was able to be calmed down with a breastfeed.   Andrew and I were anxious enough about his difficulty in breathing to take him to the Children’s Hospital (why does he always seem to get sick on the weekends?).

We rocked up at Emergency at the Children’s Hosptial around 10 am yesterday morning and had Nathan’s name put on the waiting list to see the triage nurse.  There seemed to be four children ahead of us, but when one of the nurses heard Nathan coughing she came out to the waiting area to check him out and then took us into a room where she entered all our details and organised an acute care bed for him.  A doctor checked him out then and gave him a steroid to relax the airways and he was then monitored for the next couple of hours.  Needless to say that as soon as the medicine started to make Nathan feel better, he was a real handful to keep out of trouble….there’s a lot of interesting looking things in a hospital!!!  He ripped off the sticker on his toe that was monitoring his heart rate and oxygen levels too, but he obviously didn’t need them by that time since they weren’t replaced.  When the doctor came back to check him out we were told we could go home, and he also gave us a steroid tablet to give to Nathan that evening to help him through Sunday night.  We finally left the hospital around 2 pm, a little more knowledgeable about signs of breathing distress and with a very exhausted toddler.

Nathan slept well last night and today is a lot better and though he is still having nasty coughing fits, he isn’t having trouble breathing through them (and the horrible barking sound associated with it all has gone).  Still, he is very easily upset and of course that sets off a coughing fit, so we are having a quiet day at home today.

Nathan often says his little phrases over and over again, and on the way to the hospital yesterday he was saying “doctor, medicine, feel better”.  Thankfully he was right!

This entry was posted on Monday, September 28th, 2009 at 12:06 pm and is filed under Health, Nathan's second year. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.