This Too Shall Pass

The big kids were off out the door to school, the babies were still sleeping, and I was doing a happy dance on my way back to bed. It doesn't happen very often, but this morning, I needed to sleep. I wanted to sleep. And so I did. It was a blissful forty five minutes. And then, Henry was beside me, coughing, wheezing, gasping. I was awake, WIDE awake in seconds, holding him, calming him, urging him to breathe slowly, deeply. Later, at the doctor's office, we learned what he experienced was an episode of bronchial spasms. Irritated, in his case, by a virus, and a wicked cough, his airways constricted, over and over, making it really difficult to breathe. It only lasted a minute or so, but a minute when your child is struggling to breathe is a very long minute. He's been a little hoarse the past few days, his throat a little scratchy. But the cough was new, the bronchial spasms terrifying.

But. Now we are armed. Oral steroids, nebulizer treatments, an antibiotic in case of secondary infection. Hauling children to doctors offices and hospitals and pharmacies is exhausting and makes for a very long day. I can't help but think, in this moment, of the women out there (Monica, I'm looking at you) who do this, the coming and going from doctor to doctor, with many children in tow, on a regular basis. God bless you for it. I'm sure it isn't easy. But now we are home, and all is well. Or at least on its way to being well.

Henry is already doing better. We have to watch him close the next few days, and listen closely to his breathing, his cough. After his first nebulizer treatment, which he handled like a champ, his Dad asked him how it was. He replied, "It was tehwable."

I love that kid.

And I'm grateful. Grateful for modern medicine that helps us be healthy, and get healthy when we are not. And I'm grateful for my bed, cause it's really comfortable, and grateful that it's the weekend and I don't have to make lunches for school right now, or before the sun comes up in the morning. And I'm grateful for gelato, and that the awesome people that make my most awesome favorite gelato also make a peach sorbet that makes me swoon. They call it sorbetto. And boy howdy, it's good stuff.

And I'm grateful for this kid. I already said that, didn't I? It's okay. It's worth saying again.