What a difference a day makes

Twenty-four hours ago Little Warrior and I were both taking our first ride in an ambulance.  He as the patient, and me as the garden-variety neurotic, worried Mother.

The night before, Little Warrior had been coughing all night and in the morning he started wheezing.   It progressed from bad to worse very quickly despite me using Ventolin and Redipred (last resort).  So you can appreciate that I was already a little worried at this point.  I dutifully packed our bag (food, DVD player, iPad, USB loaded with movies etc etc) and quickly got Little Warrior into the car.  I turn the key and...nothing.  This has happened before and I blogged about that here.  The Architect and I had thought we had fixed the problem, but apparently not.  And I was finding out the hard way, with Little Warrior sitting the backseat, struggling to breathe.

So it was straight into the house and on the landline calling triple 0.  I was trying to stay calm as I spoke to the Triple 0 operator and describing his symptoms when the line went dead.  Can you believe it - the handset had died.  I mean, I'm calm now when I'm telling you what happened, but yesterday I was furious.  Beyond furious - I couldn't believe that two things in a row (that I desperately needed to work) had up and died on us.

Thankfully, we have two other handsets in the house and the operator was still on the line.  The ambulance arrived and Little Warrior was on the nebuliser within minutes.  The paramedics were fabulous - they took care of my little man and had us safely at the hospital within a short space of time.  On arrival he was pronounced borderline medium/severe and for the next five or six hours he had a regular dose of Ventolin and various other medications.

We've been here before unfortunately. Both Polynesian Princess and Little Warrior suffer from asthma-like symptoms.  Apparently they can't be properly diagnosed as asthmatic until they're over six.  (But the facts are that they have trouble breathing, and when they take Ventolin and Redipred it helps them breathe).

We follow both of their asthma management plans to the letter, but sometimes it's still not enough and we end up in hospital.  Our closest hospital is the Royal Children's Hospital, Brisbane. And I cannot speak highly enough of the staff there.  Words can't come close to describing how grateful I am to them all.  Beautiful human beings doing beautiful work.

Last night was the first time we were required to stay overnight, due to Little Warrior not responding quickly to the medication.  It was a fitful sleep for both of us, but eventually a new day dawned and Little Warrior had managed to go three hours without needing Ventolin.  This was good news, because it meant he was responding to the medication, he wasn't working so hard to breathe anymore, AND we could go home.

And so.  Here we are, 24 hours later.  Little Warrior is fast asleep in bed, he's on the mend, and I'm still getting by on adrenaline and caffeine.  I know that once the adrenaline and caffeine wears off I'm going to need a weepy session.  I predict that will be somewhere around three or four o'clock today.  At three o'clock yesterday Little Warrior was hooked up to a nebuliser and watching a movie.  And me?  I was trying to remain calm and not burst into tears in front of my little man.

What a difference a day makes...