The Croup

At this time of the season, Jack always gets this horrible hacking cough.
Very dry, sounds like his voice box is about to come out of his mouth,. His little face winces when he coughs and he holds his chest. I hate to see him so uncomfortable and miserable.
We would take him to the doctor's or urgent aid everytime this happens and they would always tell us the same thing,
His lungs are clear.
How can you sound like that and yet have no fluid in your lungs? Asks the mom who is not a doctor yet has seen this on her kid one too many times?
 Meanwhile, he would be feverish, coughing and would rarely get a minute of rest before the coughing storm would start. We never got a straight answer as to why he would get this all the time at this time of the year. We still haven't.
Bronchitis was thrown around as a possibility, asthma, allergies. We went to an ENR specialist last year to see what was going on and that went splendid. Our first day there, she had Jack restrained by her nurse as she tried to look down his throat. He of course was screaming and crying only because some stranger , and not his mom beside him, was holding him down. She was supposed to be a pediatric ENR doctor as well. but she did not display one ounce of friendliness, kindness or gentility. That was the end for me. We will find a new doc thanks.
As if God heard my prayers, Jack became well and that cough went away. So much that we haven't heard a bad cough from him in a long time.
Til now.
But now, a doctor finally told us what we wanted to hear. Croup is what he has and is a word that I have heard over and over again from other people's kids. Now Jack has it and the best that we can do is what we have been doing this whole time. The nebulizer treatment. Which Jack has perfected by turning it on, placing the mask over his face and reading a book. Like a champ.
So at least he doesn't have bronchitis, allergies, influenza as how my parents sometimes look at it.
Simple, ugly, dirty croup. I guess I can live with that.