We took Charlie to the emergency room last night, because he was having trouble breathing.  I wish there were a way to make that funny, but hoo boy it was NOT.  Wade had gone up to the playroom, where our desk computer lives, to check his email and he heard Charlie gasping for breath; when we turned on his light, his lips were purple and he was wild eyed and terrified.  This morning I was thinking about what might have happened if Wade hadn’t gone to check his email, if he had stayed downstairs with me, where all we could hear was the television.

Not funny.

Charlie has croup; he’s still sounding kind of froggy today.  He’s also tired because we spent three hours in the ER waiting room, you know, waiting.  And also watching Hannah Montana because apparently there’s some rule against watching good TV in the ER waiting room.  There also appears to be some rule about not turning the volume down to a reasonable level because holy hell it was loud.  No one needs to hear Billy Ray Cyrus that loud.

I’d never seen Hannah Montana before and perhaps a visit to the ER wasn’t really the right situation in which to experience the phenomena of Miley Cyrus for the first time, but honestly I hated it.  Then again, I was a little stressed and pretty cranky, so who knows.  I probably shouldn’t blame poor Miley.

(You know Miley wasn’t her real name — it was Ruby or something like that — it was a nickname because she was such a smiley baby, and then she had it legally changed.  Insert eye roll here.)

The triage nurse told us that Charlie likely had croup and not pneumonia, and she gave him Tylenol for the raging fever and then we sat and sat and sat in the waiting room where of course he had no trouble at all breathing properly.  The other patients were nearly all people who were treating the ER like a primary care physician’s office and were in need of throat cultures or follow ups for ear infections, and at some point we realized both that it might be 3:00 am before Charlie saw a doctor AND that croup was something our primary care physician could treat for us, so we went home, without seeing a doctor.  Charlie slept in the bed with me, and aside from coughing a little was fine.

I, of course, was awake for most of the night waiting to see if mah baybee was going to stop breathing and dieeeee.  Which he did not.

Today we saw the pediatrician; she confirmed that indeed he DOES have croup; she gave him an oral steroid to prevent any more scary not-breathing episodes and also to help him bulk up for soccer (kidding! ha ha so funny).  So all’s well that ends well!  I guess.

*Last spring my next door neighbor took her son to the ER for — guess! — croup, which he still refers to as “floop.” I love that.  Also, when we realized that Charlie needed to see a doctor pronto last night, we called the same neighbor, who came over in her pajamas and slippers to stay with Henry.  I just love her, I truly do.  We are NEVER MOVING.