Wild Man's first ER visit.

Well last night Mr. Genius and I had to take Wild Man to the ER for the first time.

Thankfully he is OK now, but I was scared to death for a little while.


Yesterday was a normal day, we weren't even outside very much. Which actually is unusual for us lately to not be outside much because of it getting cooler outside. Wild Man maybe coughed twice but nothing that concerned me at all.

At about 9:30 Wild Man suddenly woke up and started coughing really bad.

Now I feel that we are pretty experienced in the croup area. I think in the past year Wild Man has had croup at least 15 times. Even more the year before.


I went into the kitchen to get him some Robitussin and then went up to his room. He was sitting up drooling and his arms were shaking. (like when you are really cold and you have no control you are shivering so bad) and the cough it sounded like croup, but actually worse. It was a very deep and short cough. Like he didn't even have enough air to cough. His breath was very raspy and I could barely hear him cry standing next to him. I tried to get him to talk to me and he couldn't.

So I swooped him up and went into him bath to start a steam bath and when I sat him down his legs started shaking and he was still drooling. He was quite lethargic. At this point I started thinking this isn't croup I was thinking this was an asthma attack. We haven't had one before but with how much Wild Man gets croup the Dr's. were starting to question if he has asthma or not. So I brought him downstairs and called Mr. Genius, who had just gotten home from playing tennis. Told him to come in NOW!

Mr. Genius took Wild man up to take the steam bath and I called the Dr.

The Dr. told me to do the typical steam bath then stand in front of the freezer for 10 minutes and then back to the steam bath. When we took Wild Man downstairs to stand in front of the freezer, he started panicing. It probably didn't help that I was crying uncontrollably. So he wouldn't look in the freezer and he was breathing even faster and getting even more raspy.

With Mr. Genius and I thinking that this is more an asthma attack then croup we decided to go to the hospital.

My parents came over and we rushed off. I called my croup and asthma expert friend Beth and she could hear Wild Man breathing over the phone and said that the best place would be Vanderbilt children's. So we were on our way.

As we were driving he was having less trouble breathing but was still having trouble talking. I mentioned that maybe we should stop and walk around outside somewhere cuz maybe the cool night air was helping. We were in Smyrna and Mr. Genius pulled into the Smyrna hospital. We walked around for a second and then we prayed not knowing what to do. When we were done praying Wild Man asked to see the Dr. which we took to be the answer that God was giving us because if you saw the first reaction to when we told him we were going to the Dr. you would think this was a whole different child.

So in we went.

And 2 hours later then told us it was croup and gave him a very strong steriod.

I am still convienced that it was more then croup with the drooling and the shaking. But I guess we did everything we could and next time we will just drive around outside for awhile before we decide to go to the hospital.