"The wonderful care experienced by my young son"

My little boy had gone to bed without eating dinner - something which immediately rang alarm bells - and when I checked on him later I found him with a raging temperature and a bad cough. When I found him difficult to rouse, I put him straight into the car and drove to A&E. My backside barely grazed the chair in A&E waiting room before we were whisked through to be assessed.

He was immediately hooked up to monitors while a very patient nurse chatted to *him* and explained to *him* what she was doing because he was quite obviously terrified. For the next four hours we were cared for continuously and once a diagnosis of croup had been made and steroids administered, we were moved to a quiet room so that my son could rest and we could make sure the treatment was working. I was reassured that I had done the right thing in bringing my clearly sick son to A&E as I was musing about wasting the staff's time with what I thought was just a cough and we were both treated with dignity and respect.

As terrifying as this experience was, the staff providing the care in A&E made it so much easier for us. I left the hospital fully briefed on what to expect while the illness ran it's course, and what symptoms to look for which would require me bringing my son back. Fortunately the medication administered was sufficient to ease his immediate symptoms and he recovered fully within two weeks.