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August 2011 Moms
ladybugpjb
member
steroids for cough
ladybugpjb
member
I'm going to research this later, but I wanted to see if anyone has had experience with it.
Today I took DS to a local urgent care clinic. (We're moving/travelling and in between doctors, so that was our only care option.)
DS has had a cold for over a week that I think he picked up on the airplane when we flew back from Hawaii last week. He's mostly sniffly, and has a lot of drainage that makes him cough occasionally. He might cough five or six times a day.
The doctor we saw prescribed some antibiotics since he has a "little bit of a sinus infection" and some steroids for his cough. We're leaving town tomorrow, so I couldn't get to the pharmacy to get the stuff today.
So...my question is about the steroids.
Have you given LO steroids for a cough? I personally don't like to be on steroids - I had them after a couple of surgeries. I'm just hesitant to give him something like that for a cough that is almost non-existent. Last time he was sick, I had the Vicks vaporizer thing that heats up scented pads and fills the room with soothing vapors, and I'm planning to get one of those when we get to my parents' house.
Am I being irresponsible? Should I just give him the steroids? They just seem unnecessary since his cough really isn't that bad. I don't even know what they are supposed to do, and the clinic doctor was in a bit of a rush to get on to the next patient, so I couldn't ask.
Again, I'm going to research later. I just wanted to see if anyone could tell me their experience.
This discussion has been closed.
Re: steroids for cough
My question and I don't mean for this to sound snarky why did you take him to urgent care if it was just a minor cough? I'm not usually one to rush to the doc unless I think DD needs antibiotics and I may "under go" to the doc, but if you didn't think it was a big enough deal for meds then why take him at all? Just curious.
Meh...I was hoping to avoid the background details. They get long and complicated.
We just left Hawaii. I hated the ped office there, and I hated his ped even more. She was never there (saw her for one out of four appts in 6 months), and the one time I saw her, I felt she was a bit out of date on her recommendations (ie, she told me to wait as long as possible to introduce any potential allergenic foods - like, until 15 months). Switching peds with Tricare is too complicated for me to want to deal with it since we were only going to have to deal with her for one other appointment before we left.
DS never gets sick, so I actually just realized this past week that the ped office on base never gave us an emergency number or nurse advice line. I never needed it. Also, they are four hours behind us now, and I wouldn't have been able to get ahold of anyone until after noon, and I really wanted to take him yesterday morning.
So the short version: I hated his old ped and couldn't get ahold of the office anyway.
I didn't take him for the cough - I was worried that he was going to develop an ear infection (which is what happened last time he got like this). When he got the ear infection before, he showed no signs of being sick. He'd had the runny nose for over a week without any improvement, so I wanted to make sure everything else was ok.
And the reason I had to take him to urgent care is because that is where I got the referral from Tricare. With Tricare, I have to get a referral before taking him anywhere and only take him to the place they give me a referral to, or they charge big bucks (from what I understand). I actually transferred all of our stuff to the military treatment facility near my parents, then tried to make an appointment with his new pedi, but they didn't have anything available until January 7th, and I wanted to get him in as soon as we get to town this week. I really didn't want to be dealing with an ear infection over Christmas or while travelling, so it was more a precaution than anything else. I'm glad it wasn't an ear infection, but I'm glad I took him because now I know for sure.
So there's the long version.
In case that last long explanation got jumbled up:
DS doesn't have a "regulare pedi." He was assigned to a pedi at the military clinic, but we only saw her once in six months (one out of four appointments). So he had a "Primary Care Manager" who knew nothing about him, and was never at the office anyway. That's the reason I didn't bother trying to figure out how to get a hold of the old pedi. I hated that office and am so glad to be done with them.
Had he developed this cough during the day when we could have seen his pedi, or had it not have been so scary sounding I probably would have passed.