The Croup

Before the internet, & with no dictionary handy, one had to guess what the hell people were talking about by trying to understand the context.  I guess one could interrupt & ask, but they didn't always seem to be proper or polite, no matter what kind of annoying child or person you were.  When I was a teenager, I would keep a dictionary handy to look up words I didn't know, but often I was so caught up in the reading that I just let it pass - again, trusting in context.

Naturally, many words I thought I knew I didn't really know.

Just now, lost in my dumb thoughts, I remembered being told that a schoolfellow had "the croup."  I must've been very young but also impressionable, because it stayed with me - I think I recall that word in a strange, familiar way.  My childhood reasoning went something like: "Croup sounds horrible.  It sounds like a horrible soup.  A horrible hot soup that burns your insides."

Come to think of it, maybe I had the croup.  I should ask my mother.

Today - as I was saying - I was thinking about "the croup."  Immediately my brain said, "That's a made-up thing if I ever heard one!"  It did sound like something someone would say in fun.  My high school history teacher characterized all colds as "the epizootic."  As in, "Hey, Paul's not here today."  "No, bet he's got the epizootic!"

But croup is for real.  As it says in the Wikipedia,

Croup (or laryngotracheobronchitis) is a respiratory condition usually triggered by an acute viral infection of the upper airway. The infection leads to swelling inside the throat, which interferes with normal breathing and produces the classical symptoms of a "barking" cough, stridor, & hoarseness. It may produce mild, moderate, or severe symptoms, which often worsen at night. It is often treated with a single dose of oral steroids; occasionally inhaled epinephrine is used in more severe cases. Hospitalization is rarely required.

Croup is a relatively common condition that affects about 15% of children at some point, most commonly between 6 months & 5–6 years of age. It is almost never seen in teenagers or adults.

Before the advent of vaccination, croup was frequently caused by diphtheria, & was often fatal. This cause is now a historical one in the Western world due to the success of the diphtheria vaccine & improved hygiene and living standards.

Yay vaccines!

So there's a fifteen percent chance I had the croup when I was a kid.  Sorry - that I had laryngotracheobronchitis.  That doesn't sound like bad soup.

As a postscript: if I had read that definition above in an encyclopedia, I would've had to go get a dictionary to look up the word "stridor."  Never heard it before.  But luckily I just had to click on it.  & I discovered:

Stridor (Latin for "creaking or grating noise") is a high-pitched breath sound resulting from turbulent air flow in the larynx or lower in the bronchial tree.

Though I still wish I had a giant set of encyclopedias.