It has been an interesting several days. Thursday Jenna was not feeling well. In the morning she just wanted to be held and slept a lot. The Thursday afternoon she started running a fever. When she and I came home on Thursday afternoon I had given her some Tylenol and was hoping for an ok night. She started coughing and it sounded like a dog barking. Then as the night went on she was having trouble breathing. For much of the night she and slept sitting up in the recliner in the living room. Friday morning I knew we needed to see a doctor. However our doctor is in Lynchburg and I didn't think we should drive an hour and 20 minutes to see him. I called a nurse from church and she got us an appointment in Roanoke. We got to the doctors office and Jenna's breathing was getting worse. The receptionist checking us in immediately took us back to an exam room. At that point in time we were seen by the doctor and told that Jenna had the croup and an ear infection. Her breathing was becoming so labored that Dr. Gard decided she needed a treatment of epi mist. This treatment involved putting a mask over Jenna's face and holding it there for 5 minutes. This didn't make her very happy. As this treatment was going on Dr. Gard told me that Jenna would need to go to the emergency room for observation after this treatment. The mist worked for about 4 hours and she needed to be watched to make sure it worked and if it didn't we would already be at the hospital for a second treatment. After the mist we had to clean the wax out of her ears to confirm that she did have an ear infection (which she did). So we got a prescription for that and then she was given an oral steroid. After all this Dr. Gard said he wanted an ambulance to take us to the hospital. We were probably only 5 miles away from the hospital and Jenna was breathing much better. I asked if this was completely necessary and he asked if he let me drive if I was going to go straight to the hospital. When I promised to drive straight there he decided to could take her myself.
I took Jenna to the emergency room and we were taken to the pediatric section. She had a fever of 102. They said that a fever made the croup worse so they gave her some Motrin to lower the fever. We saw several people and the doctor and then Jenna took a nap. We were in the hospital until 2. We were told that if her breathing didn't improve she would be admitted to the hospital overnight. Robb left school and showed up around 1. So we had the croup and an ear infection. While Jenna and I were waiting for our time to be up we were playing. In that playing she hit her mouth on my shoulder and bit her tongue. She bit a hole in it and we had to deal with a lot of blood. So I decided that was the 3 things that were going to happen.
Finally at 2 the doctor said her breathing was much improved and we could go home but if it got an worse we were to come back immediately. We were also given the directions to alternate tylenol and motrin every 3 hours for the next 24 hours. We also got an oral steroid to give her for the next 3 days. So we went home and started all this medication. The hard part was waking her up in the middle of the night to take medicine. Saturday morning she was much better. She still has a cough but it doesn't sound like a bark. Last night she slept through the whole night. I'm sure we are on the mend. Jenna is also use to taking medicine and doesn't fit it at all now. I just ask her to open her mouth and she takes whatever I give her.