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From: christensen@apollo.uucp (Wendy Christensen)
Newsgroups: net.med
Subject: Croup
Message-ID: <2a86c524.a51@apollo.uucp>
Date: Wed, 4-Dec-85 12:42:34 EST
Article-I.D.: apollo.2a86c524.a51
Posted: Wed Dec  4 12:42:34 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 6-Dec-85 06:32:11 EST
Organization: Apollo Computer, Chelmsford, Mass.
Lines: 30



(BarnesBJ @ AT&T Information Systems Laboratories, Denver) writes:
> Can anyone tell me more about croup? How serious can this be?
> Does it usually re-occur?
> I have to admit when the doctor told me to check her breathing
> hourly during the night it scared the hell out of me.

Every child in my family (all ten of us) had bouts of croup before we were
two years old. Yes, it is very serious: the baby stops breathing. In my case,
my mother woke up for no reason in the middle of the night and felt compelled
to go check on me (which she normally didn't do). I wasn't breathing. (My dad
later claimed his car didn't touch the ground all the way to the hospital. My
mother, to her dying day, regarded my survival as a true miracle.) In those
days, an oxygen tent was the immediate treatment. I was so sick that the doctor
had to take an oxygen tent away from a child in an iron lung so that I could be
put in the tent. Similar things happened to each person in my family. I don't
recall anyone having more than one or two bouts, however. Once treated, each
child was fine within a day or two. There seems to have been no permanent or
long-term damage or effects of any kind in any of us. Once the child gets
beyond a certain age (for us, about two), the danger seems to go away
completely.

We also knew many multi-child families in which the problem never came up at
all, but once it has happened in your family, you should be wary for 
recurrences. I would definitely follow your doctor's advice about checking
up on the baby.

A question for you doctors, etc., on .med - Is croup thought to be related to
mysterious "crib deaths?" Has any connection ever been found?