Sick, Sick, Sick, Sick - That's All Four of Us

I think Travis started it.  It began with a runny nose and then he complained that his ear hurt.  His 6 year check-up turned up an ear infection.  He gave the runny nose and sore throat to Randy and me.  We have been going through every box of kleenex in our house.  All of us were going down, but Justin was doing fairly well.  For a little while anyway.

It had been a while since we have been to the ER.  Justin went to sleep just fine and around midnight he woke up struggling to breathe and we knew that croup had returned.  Having been briefed by our nurse during at our last ER visit for croup, we tried all the tricks to calm Justin down and get him back to sleep.  We steamed in the shower and I went for a drive with the windows rolled down.  While we were driving Justin listened to his favorite Veggie Tales songs.  "If You're Happy and You Know It" came on and I wasn't sure if he was asleep or awake until the verse "If you're happy and you know it shout hooray" came around and I saw a little fist pump go up in the rear view mirror.  No claps, no foot stomping, not even a "hooray", but a fist pump.  I thought that meant we were headed in the right direction.  The only way we could get him to sleep was sitting up so that's what I did.  Until we had to start all over with the shower and the drive.  That lasted most of the night until I had to get up at 6 am and make a casserole for church.  But we made it through the night without an ER visit, so we thought we were out of the woods.

Justin didn't seem to get any better during the day and I didn't think I could make it another night like that plus it was Superbowl Sunday, which we knew would bring lots of traffic to the ER after the game.  So we gave up and went in early.  Of course Justin improved immensely.  Darn it!  Happens every time.  He even let us watch the first half of the game from the room.   

How do you convince a doctor that this is the face of someone who is sick?

Or this?

We had a great doctor.  He even called Justin's cardiologist to confirm that he didn't think Justin needed any other treatment.  We also got more medicine which truly helped us make it through the night.  He started getting better the next day and finally the third day was the charm.  Yeah!  We love healthy!  ALL of us!