The first couple days of Sept. Emma had gotten a little cough. She wasn't running a fever with it but I decided to take her to the pediatrician, they told me it was croup. The doctor said it was viral, that it would just run its course and there wasn't anything to give her just more rest, put a humidifier in her bedroom. So we did everything to help her feel better and over the next week the cough only got worse, quite a bit worse. Deke was putting in a million hours at work including night shifts due to a remodel in the department. I was up and down every night with Emma and then trying to peel my eyes open to work and care for her during the day. Not to mention trying to keep up with Hudson which is a full time job in itself these days. I was so exhausted. So back in to the pediatrician's office we went, this time we saw a different doctor. I explained that it was getting worse and she was starting to have really bad coughing spells and that she was getting really lethargic. The doctor looked in her ears, nose, throat, said everything looked beautiful, that she had no fever and that it was just croup. Again I was advised to keep her rested and that it would run its course. I was frustrated, I felt like they weren't listening to what I was telling them about how bad the cough was getting. I felt like they just brushed me off. Two nights later we had just put the kids down and Deke and I were sitting watching tv when we heard a gasping sound, we went running in to Emma's room and she was completely purple. Deke started pounding on her back and finally we could hear her labored breathing. It was such a frightening moment for Deke and I. After having already suffered great loss there is no way to explain the awareness we have of the fragility of life. We rushed her in to the urgent care around the corner and she was examined again. Her esophagus was so swollen her airway was less than half the size it should be. They quickly gave her a stereoid to take down the swelling. "Well she has a really bad case of croup here" the doctor concluded as Deke and I just sat and stared at him. I was so frustrated that I toned him out as he gave me the same speech about letting it run its course and blah blah blah. I insisted to Deke that this wasn't croup, it was something else. Yet I kept telling myself that she had seen three separate doctors that all confirmed the same diagnosis. So I ignored my gut and waited for her to start "turning the corner." We took her home, gave her some cough medicine and I don't think Deke or I slept more than thirty minutes at a time continuing to check on her throughout the night. I was so scared she would stop breathing. We would prop her up practically sitting to help her breathe better and give her water to loosen the phlegm. She would start a coughing spell and then just sit and cry because her body could not get rest because of the cough. Now Hudson had developed a cough and Hunter had a pretty progressed cough as well. I felt like a zombie. I worked, then cared for sick kids all day and night and did the same routine over and over. I didn't go out anywhere other than to get groceries. I sat in the house feeling like I was climbing the walls. During the day Emma was getting completely sedentary. Over the next four days it got really scary. Emma was having coughing fits that would last for a couple of minutes straight and she would turn purple from coughing so hard. She would cough so hard she would throw up or choke on the phlegm. The fourth day the cough started sounding really weird. It was almost like a giant gasp of inhaled air over and over. That night she didn't rest at all. She coughed the entire night for hours on end. At one point I went in and she had coughed so hard she had lost bladder and bowel control. Something was very wrong, I didn't care what the doctors were saying my baby was really sick and this was NOT croup. The next morning I pretty much marched into the pediatrician and let them know that this was not croup, that my daughter was very ill and that they would be testing her for everything they could because I was not leaving there until someone figured out what was actually going on with her. As the doctor examined her she started to comment how her "ears and throat looked fine, she has no fever" and I could feel the heat rising in my cheeks. Then Emma went into a coughing fit and the doctors eyes got wide with shock. "That's whooping cough. We'll have to swab her to make sure but I am 99% positive by the sound of it that she has whooping cough." She swabbed Emma and Hudson and prescribed antibiotics for them to start on right away. I was at work that Mon when the office called and she told me the swabs came back positive, both Emma and Hudson had whooping cough. I sat there right in the middle of my work place tears streaming down my face. I couldn't even talk I was crying so hard. There really is no other way to put it, I was pissed. I was so angry that she had gone misdiagnosed. Deke and I had watched her suffer through it with only cough syrup and cough drops to ease her discomfort. I was frustrated with myself for having gut instincts and not fighting against the doctors sooner. I should have trusted myself, I'm so sorry baby girl. It was the 22nd of Sept. and Emma had been sick for seventeen days before she finally got an antibiotic. The doctor then continued to tell me that the whole family needed to be swabbed, we would need to enter the office through the back door in the alley behind the office. So that afternoon we stood outside the door and knocked, a nurse opened the door gowned as if sharing the same air as us would cause her skin to melt and handed us all masks. As she went to get the tests I looked over at the kids and couldn't help but smile and shake my head.
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