Tikkabik

So Robert woke up in the middle of Tuesday night in a total panic -- he was coughing and having trouble breathing. Bob tends to get congested in the middle of the night, so we didn't think too much of it, but his breathing was so labored it was apparent that something else was going on. In fact, it was so bad that I ended up driving him to the emergency room.

Ironically, the cold night air seemed to help him greatly -- by the time we were half-way to the hospital, he was breathing much better.

We got to the ER and the nurse took his temperature, which was a low-grade fever: 100.9. The ER doctor took one look at him and diagnosed Robert as having croup. Croup, he told me, is identical to laryngitis in adults -- a viral infection of the upper respiratory system.

Croup presents differently in kids because of the shape of the throat, he told me -- so instead of losing their voices, kids might get hoarse, but get a bad cough and have trouble breathing.

The fix was to give Robert a steroid pill to help his breathing. We ended up getting home a bit after 5 o'clock, so I was a walking zombie by the time we got home.

Croup usually runs a three-day course, according to the doctor, so we're two thirds of the way through it at this point. Robert didn't have a very comfortable night last night -- he looks tired and worn out -- but he wasn't hysterical and panicked as he was the night before.

Robert is a miserable patient. He's cranky, bitchy, and, for whatever reason, refuses to use tissues to blow his nose, instead preferring to just block one nostril and blow as hard as possible. That's very punk rock, but also unsanitary as hell, at least around the house, and a cause for Bonnie and me to yell at him when we see him doing it.