False croup(memory from Andreas B)I could have been 4-5 years at the time. It was winter, and winter time my first years before I started school usually meant one or several rounds of false croup. I can remember the feeling of waking up in the middle of the night feeling my throat starting to tighten and the barking sound when I coughed. Often, I was taken into the bathroom with the hot water in the shower turned on so that I could breathe in the soothing steam. But this year was worse, and I ended up at the children's ward in the Tower Block. I can recall lying in a hospital room with a transparent plastic tent covering my bed, and the tent being filled with cold steam entering through a plastic hose. But what I remember most of all is that next to me, there was a girl - she too had false croup - only that the doctors have had to cut a hole in her neck so that she could breathe. I can recall thinking that, please, don't let them make a hole in my neck like the girl in the bed beside me! |