Justin's Story     Justin Alexander Winslett was a healthy, 8 1/2 month old little boy until Monday, January 15, 1001. He woke up with a really bad cough. He sounded like a seal barking. I did some reading and talked to the on-call nurse and found out that it was probably croup. I stayed up with him all night long. I was going to call his doctor the next day, but by morning he seemed fine. Tuesday night, he awoke again coughing. I stayed up all night with him again, and took him to the doctor Wednesday. He was diagnosed with croup and given a steroid shot. He seemed to be getting better. He slept all night Wednesday. Thursday, he still seemed to be improving until about Midnight. He awoke again. He wasn't having trouble breathing, but he was coughing very badly. My husband and I tried taking him outside to breath cool, fresh air. We tried steaming up the shower. He still wasn't having trouble breathing, but nothing was helping his cough. Well, Friday the 19th, he had gotten worse. He was about the same as Monday and Tuesday night. About 7:00PM we decided to go to the ER to get him a breathing treatment. He was breathing fine, but since croup tends to get worse at night, we wanted to go ahead and get him treated so he could sleep. I signed in the ER at 7:35. When we were in the room waiting on the treatment, he was laughing, smiling, kissing me, and trying to crawl around on the bed. They hooked up the treatment, and I had to hold him in my lap and pen his arms down while keeping the mask over his face. He started crying and trying to get the mask off, which was making him cough worse. After the treatment, he got a little worse. A second treatment was given. He got a little worse. The doctor said they were going to admit him for observation and put us on a list for a room. We were moved into another room with two beds (the first room had about 10 beds) to wait to be moved upstairs. Three more treatments were given back to back to try and reduce the swelling in his throat. While that was going on, they told us they were going to go ahead and admit him in the Special Care Unit. During the last treatment, he started coughing really badly (I didn't know it then b/c I couldn't see his face, but he had coughed up blood) and they took him from me. They gave him a shot of paralysis medicine and started trying to intubate him. They couldn't get the tube in b/c his throat was swelled almost completely shut, and his throat was having spasms. He coded (they lost his heartbeat) and they started to bag him. They were having to force the air into his lungs, and that caused his lungs to collapse. They gave him chest tubes. They were finally able to intubate and got him back after 20 minutes. They moved him to the Pediatrics Intensive Care Unit (PICU). In the PICU he was stable, and just about our whole family was there. About 5:00AM Saturday morning, everyone told my husband and me to go home and get some sleep, and they would stay. We left. About 20 minutes after we got home, the phone rang, and my mom told Jeremy, my husband, that they had taken him off the paralysis medicine, and he woke up (they didn't tell us they were going to do that or we wouldn't have left). She said that he recognized Jeremy's mother's voice and tried to reach for her. He started getting upset, so they paralyzed and sedated him again. We thought that was a very positive sign, and we just knew he was going to be ok. He never regained consciousness again. Saturday night, his blood saturation and heartbeat went down, sand his blood pressure shot up. He was having a seizure. We just couldn't see it b/c he was paralyzed. They gave him some tests, and found out very little brain activity and cerebral edema. He was pronounced dead that Monday, January 22, from brain death.