Let me tell you a little about my weekend. I would have posted here sooner but for the fact that things went in a slightly unexpected direction Friday night. Let me start by saying that I am quickly discovering that there is little in this world that brings a parent to the verge of heartbreak more than seeing one's progeny in acute physical distress. I'm more accustomed to seeing him in cute physical dress.
Amy and the boy had gone to bed and I was in the process of staying up too late. It had just passed 12.30am and I was shutting down the computer when Amy's alarmed voice beckoned urgently from the bedroom. As I "dashed to see what was the matter", Amy met me in the hallway bearing an infant boy with tears streaming down his face, struggling to inhale and, on exhaling, barking almost exactly like Gollum from The Lord of the Rings.
Now, Declan (for that is the infant boy's name), had gone to bed with a bit of a head cold that Amy had also picked up and which I, too, was fated to receive later this same weekend. What is also a common occurrence in youth of this age is to become more succeptible to CROUP. After a few very long seconds of watching my boy struggle for breath, I swallowed my heart, which had decided to leap straight into my throat, and realized his ailment for what it was. You see, I also suffered chronically from this particular malaise up to the age of 6 or 7.
So, retreating to the cure that had helped my own mother through many long nights, I bundled him into a blanket and carried him into the cool night air. Cool and/or humid air is the best immediate home remedy for this. Another good idea is to close the door on a hot running shower. There was a very slight improvement in his condition, but Amy had already prepped the diaper bag for the trip to the emergency room at the Sturgeon County Hospital, so off we went.
Declan quickly improved in the hands of the respiratory professionals at the hospital, but was kept for the next day and a half to be sure to avoid a regression. On the plus side, not only did he and Amy get their own room in the pediatric ward, the got the ENTIRE ward to themselves for the duration of their stay. Amy almost got tired of hearing the nurses compliment on Declan's cuteness and good behaviour. Almost.
(Let me interject here by saying that as I was driving in to work today, I heard the story on a news segment of a young couple driving in to Edmonton from Sylvan Lake, about an hour and a half from the city. Near the end of their drive, on one of the commuter freeways in Edmonton, their infant child stopped breathing. They immediate stopped in the freeway and flagged down a vehicle with a cell phone since they didn't have one of their own. The child's heart had stopped by the time the ambulance arrived, and he was declared dead upon arrival at the hospital. The news report then went on to say that even the paramedics were in tears after the ordeal. As you can imagine, this struck rather close to home for me when I heard it.)
So Sunday afternoon saw two sleep-deprived parents and one healing baby arrive back home. I was then flanked and assaulted with the main body of the head cold whose vanguard had taken Amy and Declan by surprise and I was congested and miserable until, well, probably tomorrow morning. I'll take another shot of Nyquil before going to sleep tonight.
To top all this off - does my tone sound like I'm whining yet? - Amy was going to seal the deal today on the purchase of a used car that has been in the works for over a month now. She and the seller were at the bank exchanging a number of crisp, hundred dollar bills while I was at work for a couple hours. (I took the rest of the day off sick.) After the purchase was complete, our small family took the new car to our insurance broker to transfer the insurance from Amy's truck to the new (to her) VW Jetta. Thereafter, we drove to the west end AMA to get the vehicle registered and show the healing baby to his granny, since that's where my mother works. Before heading home, we stopped to gas up and give our new car a good wash. After exiting the car wash, the engine sputtered and died.
That's right, just stopped and wouldn't start again. We hadn't even owned the confounded thing for more than a couple hours and it was busted. Fortunately for us, at that exact moment, an AMA tow-truck was pulling into the service station and was not busy. He towed a disgruntled wife and still-moody baby to our mechanic's shop, and I followed in a taxi. I'm going to drop the car keys off at the shop tomorrow and Amy's going to see how long it'll take to get fixed. The tow-truck guy speculated that it sounded like it was a faulty fuel pump. Neither one of us is terribly impressed right now.
It's days like today that I really get a chance to sit back and think about my 64 year-old co-worker who came out of retirement a few months ago to work for the company again and, in the middle of a routine construction job, had both of his arms ripped off and is currently in the Glenrose Rehabilitation Hospital and getting his house retro-fitted to accommodate his new needs. Being inconvenienced like we have this weekend isn't really all that bad in comparison. Everything is relative.
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