It's always worse when a "heart child" has it.....

Has anyone ever told you this before? If you are the parent of a "heart child" I'm sure they have. I took Ryan to the peds office today because when she woke up this morning, her cough was TERRIBLE!!! She has had a runny nose for a couple days, and yesterday, she sounded a little congested, but this was different. She's NEVER coughed like this before. She sounded like a seal!!! Anybody know where this is going yet??

Ryan's peds office works in the way, that you never really know which doc you will see until you get there. You can always request a specific doc if you want, but to me, as long as they all really care for my child, it doesn't make a difference to me. So, at 2:30 today, Ryan saw Dr. Lacount. He listened to Ryan's chest and then heard the cough and just simply said "yup....it's croup." This really didn't surprise me because Josh also has it. UGH. Josh, however, was diagnosed about a month ago when his mom took him to the peds office. She said they gave him a steroid which ended up not working and he now is on another steroid that he takes twice a day and they have also given him an inhaler. When he was here this past weekend, his cough was still pretty bad and he was just under the weather in general. He didn't get up too many times from the couch. So there ya have it....Ryan has croup. What does this mean for a "heart kid?" It means that if Ryan's O2Sats go below 92, she should recieve oxygen. Her cardiologist needs to be made aware of that anyways because 97 is her "normal" so anything below 92 is a concern anyway. We have to carefully monitor her breathing while this nasty cough consumes her. If she seems like she is struggling to breathe (any more than normal) then he said to take her into the bathroom, turn the shower on as hot as it will go and let her breathe in the steam from the room. Once we've done that for about 5-10 minutes, if she is still having problems, take her outside. He said sometimes the fresh cold air will help open the airway. If neither of those work, she needs to go to the emergency room. He did also tell me that 95% of these "heart kids" that end up with croup, have at least one emergency room visit within a month. Dr. Lacount also said this will probably last that long. GREAT!!! It just keeps coming. They gave her Decadron before we left (a small dose of liquid steroid) and said that is all she should need. If for any reason she starts to turn blue, we need to just go straight to the ER...which I would do anyways.

This is how our day was.....how was yours??