Darn croup.

Well, last night we used our planned route to the hospital. As is usual with croup, Soren's breathing got more labored during the night. He was still able to sleep but since it seemed to be getting worse, we decided to take him in. I'm glad we did. We had a doctor who spoke some English and he admitted Soren.

Foreign hospitals are always a bit scary since we really don't know exactly what is going on. But the quality of care seems quite high. Much more low-tech than we have at home, but much more "care" oriented. For example, the nurse came into the room many times during the night to feel if Soren had a fever and to listen to his breathing. In the US our experience has been that the nurses simply have a list of chores to complete - take temperature at a certain hour, check blood pressure, measure urine output etc. etc. etc. Nothing against our nurses, our system just seems to need to get so much work out of them in their shift that there really isn't time for hands on care and attention. This was far less invasive and, in my opinion, better suited to letting Soren get the rest he needed. He's been getting nebulizer breathing treatments which seem to be improving things.

We are in a private room. The interesting thing though is that instead of walls between the rooms it is all windows. We can see all the other children and their mothers from our room. Soren has enjoyed waving and blowing kisses at them all. He's such a trooper for a sick guy - he's still really social and wants to be helpful to the doctors so he sits still, breaths like they tell him too, sticks out his tongues so they can see his throat. And always tells them thank you when they leave. He's such a sweetie.

The doctor today speaks very clear English and confirmed that he has croup. She suggested it would be best to stay another night, which actually is a relief for me. Knowing that it gets worse at night means that if we were discharged I'd spend another sleepless night wondering if we needed to go back to the hospital. Now we know that he can get the care he needs if things get worse again tonight. Since we've been down this path before we know that it us usually two bad nights but then things improve pretty quickly. Hopefully that will be the case again this time.