OH CROUP!

Well I realized it had been awhile since my last post. We had a bit of a rough few weeks but things are starting to get sorted again.
It all started about 3 weeks ago. Carson got a fever Sunday evening, therapy is usually Monday morning. I wondered all night if we would be able to go. When he woke up Monday with a fever of 103.2 I called and cancelled our appointment. He got worse and worse. Being a Respiratory Therapist I knew it was Croup and tried to just wait it out. He is getting to the age where its not supposed to cause all the stridor (swelling in the upper throat causing a high pitched sound when breathing) but for some reason when he gets it  it really puts him down. He gets bad stridor, fever, no voice, sore throat. He was down all week! No school, no OT, no tumbling, nothing. We started steroids and it still took him about a week to start feeling better.
Now before this point we had reached a place where he was doing great. Not picking his lips, keeping pretty level, no panic attacks and minimal fits. We were doing so good. BUT an entire week on the couch, the steroids, the fever, the sore throat. It was a combination for disaster for an SPD kid. First there was no meaningful sensory input for days on end, then combine that with the intense pain of the sore throat and aches in the body. You can see in the picture his lips were picked until they were bleeding. He could not speak or eat so he used lip picking to get oral input. Because he did not feel good so he didnt make much of a fuss the first few days, he progressively lost more and more of his control. THEN just as hope loomed with OT coming on Monday I got a call that our OT had to go out of town for a family emergency and he would have ANOTHER week off! The next 2 weeks were a nightmare. It was as if we had taken 5 steps forward and 20 steps back. He picked his lips all the time, fits were not once or twice a day but it felt like every 5 minutes, crazy running and climbing started again. We couldnt go anywhere or do anything without melt-downs and chaos. It was a nightmare.
We are now getting some order and control back. We are still not back where we were but we are getting there, he is improving each day. I can only PRAY with all my might that he does not get sick ever again, although I know it wont happen. So for now I just dread the day when he does get sick and we have to do this AGAIN!