SUZI: The Croup

I’m supposed to be doing bookwork for the church right now, but I’m having a bit of a hard time focusing, so I thought I'd put up an update on the Pack of Three household.  We continue being the house of sickness and disease.  Scott’s eye, which recently had an extraordinarily painful infection in it, is miraculously so much better…just in time for Cooper to get croup!  Oh, the fun just doesn’t end.

I’ve always heard of croup, but somehow thought it was some outdated sickness that only happened on Little House on the Prairie or something.  I assure you that “croup” is alive and well.  In case you, like me, are in fact unfamiliar with croup, I’d be happy to give you a run down.  Take your normally happy child who is finally sleeping pretty well and, without any warning signs, spike his temperature in the middle of the night to about 102.  Don’t give him any real symptoms leading up to this except a slightly runny nose.  Then keep his temperature between 100 and 102 for the next three days.  This is enough to cause utter irritability.

Make sure your child is extraordinarily sensitive about absolutely everything that could possibly happen.  You touched his arm?  Yes, I believe that would be reason enough to fall on the floor sobbing.  After three days of that, in the middle of the night, your child will be replaced with a barking seal!  This barking cough will now be added to the fever.  By now you have had 4 nights of hardly any sleep.  Make sure your child schedules this transformation in time to miss all Easter festivities.  Your child will now only sit on the couch watching Snow Buddies seven hundred times interspersed with an occasional Dora or Wonder Pets episode.  You won’t have to worry about cooking anything for your child.  He will let you know that, “I don’t like it,” no matter what it is that you have prepared.  Day 6 will see some slight improvement, but the sobbing continues.  I’d like to tell you how it all ends except we haven’t gotten there yet.  I’ll be sure to let you know.

Two nights ago, after going into Cooper’s room every 30 minutes to tend to his coughing fits, I just couldn’t do it anymore (and it’s not that Scott is a slacker…it’s just that Cooper is a mama’s boy when he’s sick or tired or well, for that matter).  I did something I haven’t done in a very long time… I picked Cooper up and put him in bed with us.  Then the real fun began.  I think I ended up with about 6 inches of bed space and Cooper was sprawled out on both Scott and me.  Last night was much the same.  Cooper ended up sideways and kicked Scott in the head.  Scott has to be super careful with his eye, so he excused himself downstairs to the couch.  Somehow I still ended up with only about 6 inches of space.  Cooper had a coughing fit that woke him up at 3 a.m.  Then he was wide awake.  He tried crawling over me to get off the bed.  He messed with my clock.  He wanted a cough drop.  Then he wanted another one.  Then he needed a drink of water.  More coughing.  More crying.  By 4, I had to use the restroom.  He, of course, wanted to come too.  I didn’t dare turn on the lights, so I put him on his little potty next to the toilet.  Except his little potty, which he loves (thank you Aunt Jaime), sings songs.  So at 4 a.m. in the pitch black, joyful songs begin ringing through our upstairs about using “a few squares of toilet paper” and the wonderful job Cooper is doing using his potty...  “You did it!”  (which, in fact, he had not).

All of this while Scott is asleep on the couch because his son kicked him in the head while coughing like a seal.  Needless to say, Cooper and I didn’t go to sleep until 6 a.m.

Croup…alive and well.

The sweet thing about all of this is that after Cooper gets done coughing, he will turn to me and lift his little hand and say, “Pray, Coopa, pray.”  That’s his little way of saying, “Pray for Cooper.”  Though he obviously doesn’t understand all that means, he does have a level of faith that is amazing to me.  Sweetness in the midst of difficult times.

We’re on the mend and will recover.  Hopefully soon…I don’t know how many more times I can watch Snow Buddies.