Julie Helen: A trip to SouthDoc with my little boy who had Croup

IT was Saturday evening and Ricky had a cough that he just couldn’t get any relief from no matter what concoction of medication I administered. Then it turned to the barking kind of cough that can only be the dreaded Croup. My mum first mentioned SouthDoc, though it had been on my mind, but when someone else said it, it jolted me into action. The responsibility of being a parent really comes to the fore when a child is sick. They look up at you with eyes that plead for you to make it all better and it squeezes the heart in a particular way.

Ricky had a temperature and coughing made him get sick, a scary combination for a little man. We were lucky to get a call back from the out-of-hours doctor service very quickly and we made our way in to the surgery within an hour.

I always feel reassured by the calm nature of our health professionals and this time was no different. 

We were seen without delay and Ricky stood in the middle of the room and explained to Doctor Mike how he was feeling. He even wanted to know if Doctor Mike was friends with Doctor Paul, our own GP and he told him of course he was! I was astounded by the confidence Ricky showed, he wasn’t clung to me or even to his granny who had gone with us. He held his own even though he must have been feeling dreadful.

Ricky was advised to take steroids, his first ever dose of them as the doctor explained they are the only sure way to combat the virus of Croup. It could take a week for the temperature and runny nose to settle down. Ricky had had an ear infection and had to take antibiotics the previous week so the poor kid was getting a real run of bad luck and disturbed sleep. During the ear infection, he told me he felt scared one night in the middle of the night. I scooped him into my arms and promised him I was right there with him and that everything would be ok. My heart went out to him, knowing how miserable it feels to have an ear infection and not being able to fix it for him immediately, right there and then!

Ricky is a pro at taking a syringe full of Calpol, but new medication was a different story. We had to employ every trick in the book with the round of antibiotics and in the end my brother convinced him that he was such a big boy he could do it himself for the third dose with a quick drink afterwards and he never looked back.

The steroids for the Croup were in tablet form another new departure. We tried crushing and mixing the first dose with calpol, it was a disaster so granny and grandad undertook administration of the tablets on his tongue, like we all take them. We practiced first with cut up jellies. It wasn’t smooth sailing, he had a couple of false starts but as he always does, he got there in the end!

Looking after a sick child is no joke, and when we were driving back from SouthDoc I thought about my mum and dad and how they’ve spent all of the years I can remember enduring scary health situations particularly with Diarmuid who has had serious medical issues his whole life. 

I said it to mum, asked how she did it and she replied, you do what you have to do for your child, no matter what.