Worries. Part II.

It’s been two days since Simon was diagnosed with Croup, and he is worse for the wear. Yesterday we spent the day at the State Park down the road, walking through the woods, riding in the stroller, and playing on the waterfront. We frequent the park quite often– it’s a nice park. The kids had a great time: they walked, they ran, they played in the woods, tirelessly. We thought Simon was better. His face still looked pallid, intermixed with blotches of red. He still had a runny nose and a slight cough, but he seemed to feel better. At the very least he acted normal, but he wasn’t.

Last night he slept for two hours. I didn’t sleep at all. Adrianne? She slept … maybe … three hours. The problem is that he cannot stomach his prescribed steroids. (We’ve nixed the liquid albuterol– on the pediatrician’s advice– and substituted it with walks in the cool night air or breathing in hot steam from a warm bath. The steroids reduce the inflammation in his lungs, the albuterol, a quick fix, opens his airways– much like an asthma inhaler does for one with allergies.) Oh, we can get the medicine down his throat. That’s no problem. He may be 29 lbs. of solid, determined mass, who hates taking anything by mouth except food and can alligator roll with the best of them, but he’s only 29 lbs. The difficulty does not lay in the swallowing but keeping the medicine down. He vomits. I would too. The medication tastes horrible, vile. I don’t blame him one bit. Actually, I tasted his medicine to see what I could mix it in to mask the taste. One touch on the tongue took two swigs of black coffee to wipe clear the nauseating liquid’s taste out of my mouth. Adrianne, on the other hand, swallowed about 1/16 of a teaspoon. It took her nearly half the morning to rid her belly of the unsavory red liquid.

We’ve tried everything to help him keep it down, to no avail.

A third call to the pediatrician’s office in two days has given us a glimmer of hope. The office still will not give the steroid shot, they do not carry them in stock– the doctor said there was little need and the medication would “rot” on her shelf– but they recommended a medicine-compounding store not too far away. I called the store. The pharmacist, a wonderfully nice woman, explained that she could mix the steroid into a tolerable concoction, but a steroid is a steroid and it will have a bitter aftertaste, no matter what. We figured it’s worth the try.

Long story short, the pediatrician’s office never called the pharmacy, the emergency answering service refused to page the doctor until 6 pm (the pharmacy closes at 5:30 pm), and our insurance did not cover the cost of the compounding because the list of ingredients is not on their “acceptable” list of medicines. We, however, got what we needed before leaving the store. Thank God for compassionate people. Sometimes laws need to be broken for a higher good.

After all this we still decided to withhold Simon’s medications. It was a deliberate, thought-out and researched decision. We believe in modern medicine; we are not holistic people eating dried black berries and tree bark instead of taking Tylenol to relieve cold symptoms, but we still would rather not give our children medications if they do not need them. They have a long life ahead of them. I know when I was younger I received antibiotics for just about every cold. Now, thirty years later, when I was in the hospital for my emergency open appendectomy operation earlier this year, I had to be given two additional take-home doses for an extended time because my body was accustomed to the antibiotics. This, in turn, lengthened my recovery time by almost four weeks. I would rather not have my children experience the same difficulty with some medications as I do later in their lives.

The bad news is that Simon woke up at 1:30 am gasping for breath. The good news is that after 15 minutes in the cool night air he fell back asleep for the remainder of the night. We’re not out of the woods yet, but things are looking better for him.

Now if only his incisors would hurry up and come in … and if only Taylor’s body would rid itself of her cold….