The Ambulance Ride!

Last night, a little before 10pm, Monkey started coughing. 

When he gets sick he often gets a bit of a croupy cough but it's been a billion times better and far less often since he had his tonsils out 18 months ago.

So when he started coughing last night I wasn't too surprised that it sounded croupy...just a little surprised that he'd started coughing since he hadn't had so much as a sniffle throughout the day.

After a minute or so I started getting a little concerned as it was starting to sound like he was struggling to breathe so I asked the Geek to go and check on him since I still had Grub passed out on my lap.

The Geek fairly quickly hauled him out of bed and into the bathroom to get some steam happening...standard procedure in our house when dealing with a croupy cough and by the time they got there I could hear that he was REALLY struggling.

So I dumped poor Grub into the bed...thankfully he didn't wake up...and went in and arked the shower up. We decided that that wasn't going to be enough so I went digging for the nebulizer.  I found it fairly quickly as I had a pretty good idea of where it was, and I even managed to find a bowl for it but for the life of me I couldn't find the mask..it's been some years since we used it.  Then I dug out the ventolin nebules...18 months out of date

Okay so that wasn't going to work!  Plan B?  Umm...Do we need to call an ambulance?...I asked the Geek...Yeah maybe!  If we are going to call an ambulance do we need to do it NOW???

YEP!

Okay this is not the actual ambulance that we got...I didn't have the presence of mind to take an actual picture of it at the time!

We decided that the Geek would go to the hospital with him as it would be easier than me taking Grub along as well but that really upset Monkey and of course that did NOT help his breathing.  So we changed the plan and quickly stuffed some nappies and a change of clothes for bub into the nappy bag and I piled in with the baby.

When we got there we had to wait for the doctor, I was told that usually at that time of night there wasn't a line up but we picked a bad night and there were several people in front of us.  However the nurses talked to him and he told them to give him a pulmicort neb which helped immensely.  Coming from out of town though we had to stay in overnight.

We were moved to the ward and once Monkey was settled I was given a chair to sleep in with Grub...I didn't see much sleep happening but we settled down for the night and I eventually dozed off.  The next time the nurse came in (a different nurse) she had a bit of a panic because she thought Grub was going to wriggle himself off me and land on his head on the floor so she put me in the empty bed in the room...PRAISE THE LORD.  That would have been about 2am!  I didn't look at the clock but that's when Monkey was due for his obs.

So I managed to get a few hours sleep but because Grub always gets up at around 5am, my body automatically woke up then even though he was still asleep.

It's now 9pm and I am feeling 7 shades of knackered but I am thankful.

I'm thankful that I have a fairly good knowledge of what to do when my babies get sick. 

I'm thankful for the fact that we are members of St Johns Ambulance so I don't have a ruddy great bill on it's way.

I'm thankful that we live in a country where they even have ambulance services...and a town where the ambulance is quick and reliable (big thanks to Trevor for holding down the fort at our local subcentre)

I'm thankful for a public hospital system that, for all everyone complains about it, we have always gotten in fast when we actually NEED to.

And I'm thankful that Bear coped really well with the Geek being the one to do the breakfast routine this morning...just gotta hope that one doesn't turn around and bite me in the bum :D