emergency, emergency

It is the eve before I am to celebrate my 40th birthday by seeing Seinfeld at the Majestic Theater in San Antonio, followed by a stay in a lovely riverside hotel, WITH NO KIDS.

I'm awakened at 1 a.m. by the sounds of the eldest coughing and calling for me. I enter his room and he says, "Mommy, I'm sick! I'm going to throw up!" I start trying the things that have worked before, start calming him down, DH gets up and starts running the hot water in the tub, but the stridor is on the breathing out and the breathing in. With stupid medical book in hand, I contemplate whether or not this constitutes an emergency. I hear the eldest, calmer now, but still barking like a seal, start to laugh because his voice sounds funny. Hubby says, "Why don't you just call the physician's line and see what they say?" I am not convinced. I hold the eldest on my lap to try to assess the situation more clearly. I feel him start to shake and spasm. He doesn't feel feverish. But he is shaking like he has the chills. I am now able to clearly hear him struggling to exhale as much as he is struggling to inhale. The fear wraps around me and I tell DH to get him in the car, take him to the emergency room. "Do I need to call 911?" I hear myself say, as I try to swallow the panic. DH starts being indecisive and I snap into authoritative mode. I say, "Take him in your car, so you can reach him if anything happens. I don't want him sitting in the back seat of the minivan if something happens." He says, "Let's just call the physician's line and see what they say." "NO! Take him in!" DH starts getting dressed and I take the eldest downstairs, in my arms. He is shaking as if spasms of pain are ripping through his body, but he says he doesn't hurt. We go outside--oh, and I forget to trip the alarm, so first, we set that off and it scares him, but once I explain what it is and quickly disarm it, he's fine--and I tell him to breathe deeply. It seems to help some, but the shaking grows worse. I am truly frightened now and I am barely able to function. DH comes outside and asks the eldest if he is cold. "Yes," he says. I run inside and start praying, begging, pleading with God to make things ok. I grab the blanket that Aunt Kittye made for us, for him, and I run to the front door with it. DH returns and grabs it from my hand, saying, "I'll call you." I collapse on the floor in tears, sobbing to God. "Please let my baby be ok. Please don't let anything happen to him." I run upstairs and find the number for the emergency room, and call ahead, just in case. The nurse who answers sounds a bit put off by my urgency, but I don't care. She was nice enough. I just want my baby to be fine.

Several minutes pass. I begin typing the story. DH calls and says they've arrived, that they are waiting for the nurse, and that the eldest seems better. Of course, like every other time we have panicked, this time will be the same. They will tell us he is fine, that he has croup or some other such minor illness. I will again feel somewhat silly for sending my sick husband and son to the emergency room at 1:00 a.m. But in my heart, I know that it will always be this way with this boy. I will never be able to take things in stride with him. I will always panic when he is having trouble breathing, or bleeding, or any number of things that might happen to him during his young life. He came so close to being taken away from me once, and I cannot forget that. And it colors my judgement every time he wheezes, every time he cries, every time he feels pain, every time he screams out to me in the middle of the night. I will never be able to think clearly when these things happen, because I will always know what it is like to lose him, and I do not ever want that to happen again.