Mayhem After Midnight

Monday night, Joseph had croup and a high fever. Tuesday night, Joseph had a little croup and a much higher fever. We were losing sleep. Wednesday night, Adam had a bad case of croup. John stayed up most of the night with him making sure he could breath, and keeping him in cool air. Thursday night was nightmare night.

I went to bed at 12:30pm. Adam had already begun coughing, but not terribly. By 2:30am, Adam's croup was really bad. John got him out into the cold night air to help him breath. That seemed to panic Adam. By 3am, we were facing the worst croup case we have ever experienced. Adam was not breaking between coughs, and barely said, "I can't breath." The cool night air was not helping.

By this time, I was wide awake and helping John. We put Adam into a steaming shower. The hot shower helped him relax and the steamy air helped him to breath better. Since, we knew we would run out of hot water, we made a cup of bowling water for Adam to sip and breathe in the steam.

We put Adam on the couch with a pile of blankets on him, and gave him the mug of hot water, while we started trying to get the internet working so he could watch a movie ( to help him relax more). We couldn't get the internet working. John called comcast, and the system was down  for maintenance. So we looked through our videos.

Thinking, I would get back to bed soon, I refilled Adam's mug, and put a little lemon juice and sugar in it while John fussed around with getting a movie on. I sat down next to Adam, and the boiling water in his mug sloshed out. Adam freaked out and dumped most of the entire cup down his front.

Adam jumped up and ripped his clothes off. His left side down to his hip and all around his left arm was very burnt. We tried to get him into a cool bath. He hopped in and out screaming with pain, or freezing cold and feverish.  With so much of his body burned, we knew we needed to take him to the emergency room. By this time, it was 4am. We actually do not know what hospital is best for our insurance and even where most of the hospitals are around us.

I needed to call emergency rooms, but our internet was down and I had no way to get the emergency rooms phone numbers. John mentioned that while it was only 6am in Maine, my parents might be awake. They were not.

My mom got me the phone number to the hospital where I had Joshua. (The only one we knew the location of.) They actually let us talk to a nurse. They mentioned that they might have to transfer Adam to Primary Children's hospital. We thought we should just go there instead. I recalled my mom, and it took a while to get the correct phone number for Primary Children's. I needed to call them for directions.

Primary Children's Hospital doesn't answer their phone. We were really pretty frustrated. Adam was still jumping in and out of the tub and crying. We thought we better just get him to a doctor, so we woke up Ruth and Kate to tell them what was happening, and took Adam to the only hospital we knew the location of.

Adam's burns were all first and second degree, so they were able to treat him there. I also requested that he get treated for croup. It was all unpleasant. We definitely felt like the nurse seemed to think we burned our son at 4 am on purpose. But Adam was okay. And I was firm about getting him treated for croup for the next few days.

We got home just before 7am, and all went to bed. The whole night was one awful event after another. If I could go back in time, I would have taken Adam to the doctors the day before. As it is, I am grateful that Adam's burns are not serious and will not scar, Adam has been treated for croup for the next 48 hours, and because we had to go to the smaller hospital, he was seen right away and we were able to get home in time to sleep 1.5 hours before anyone else woke up.