Rhett's 1st (and hopefully last!) ER Visit

Last Friday evening after dinner we went on a walk on the empty golf course behind Phil's parent's cabin in Pinetop. Remember our daddy had just surprised us and we were basking in his attention. The weather was gorgeous and the light pristine. I didn't grab the camera since I was holding Rhett and my sweetheart's hand.

Picture Kate in her tutu/cheerleader costume with the baby doll, her hair a hot mess, dirty cheeks and dragging a broken branch. Max dressed casually, also a mess and walking proud with his broken branch-walking stick. Phil looks weary from being a student bachelor all week and has a week's worth of stubble on his manly chin. I am sporting the bedraggled mother look, whatever make-up is left on my face, hair thrown up in a haphazard mommy bun, adorable babe with a dirty-from-dinner-face perched on my hip. Picture perfect family, right? In spirit, yes. But certainly a bedraggled group.

 During our walk Phil handed Rhett a broken off branch of Aspen, it had some leaves still attached that were semi-dry. He loved shaking it and making noise. I turned my focus to our slow walking Kate and didn't catch Rhett eating the leaves until I heard him gag and then he spit up a bit. I fished a piece of leaf off his palate and we went on our way. No harm, no foul right? We went back home, did the bath and bedtime routine and went to bed ourselves.

 Six hours later, roughly midnight Rhett wakes us up with a strange barking cough and raspy cry. We pop up and quickly assess. He seems uncomfortable, cries and keeps doing the scary cough. We assume he has something stuck in his throat and naturally our thoughts turn to the leaf incident. We dress and leave for the hospital, roughly 20 minutes away. Rhett is so uncomfortable and upset that we don't put him in his car seat, (ahhh! terrible, I know! We also were worried the incline would impede breathing). He got more upset if we put him down and was only okay if he was in a certain position, more upright against my chest. This encouraged our thinking of a foreign body in his airway.

 We check into the hospital, wait and wait and finally get taken back. We already had some reservation that we were far from a children's hospital and up in a smaller rural area. We recount our story, he gets checked out and the ER physician orders an x-ray after listening to his breathing. At this point he was not laboring for breath and would bark-cough occasionally. The doctor thought he was coming down with croup. We didn't agree. His cough seemed to be of an effort to clear his throat and he grimaced afterwards with a sad cry.



Look at that beautiful spine and all those teeth! I love looking at x-rays.


At the end there was nothing they could do and the doctor was sure that nothing was in his airway and that it was just the beginnings of viral croup. We were still skeptical but respectful and wanted to be discharged. At this point it was pushing 2am and we were dog tired. Rhett couldn't fall asleep with all the interruptions and was desperately tired. The computer charting system was down and I had a feeling they were waiting on the system to boot up again before they were going to discharge us. I told Phil and he went to the nurse. They were waiting and who knows how long we would have been there! Finally a good old-fashioned paper discharge and we were on our way.

We decided to wait it out that night and if he was still uncomfortable and acting weird we would drive down to the Valley to go to a children's hospital. Phil was very worried and we both wanted to do what was best for Rhett. Imagine how awful you would feel to find out you had delayed treatment because you weren't sure. My instincts told me to wait and we so did. He went to bed after 3am and we all crashed.

Since then he hasn't had the barking cough and all that lingers is a booger nose and a slight congested cough. So definitely not croup but also not a leaf stuck somewhere, which we are very grateful for! Call us over protective but we are better to be safe then sorry.