Love In A Time of Asthma

I’m sick. The sickest I’ve been in a while. One of the perks of being an At-Home Parent is the lack of sick days. As much as I miss having her around kids more often, I don’t miss the passing on of random illnesses. But these days, as Summer gears up and pollen dusts the Earth, there is not to look forward too aside from snot and wheezy coughing for the next couple of weeks.

Over the past couple of days it’s really kicked in. A contributing factor is probably the running of our air conditioners, which has stepped up especially at night now that it’s a heck of a lot warmer. But the past two days have been extra rough on our lungs. Both Emma (2yo) and I have had a terrible cough in the evening especially when trying to sleep. The time had come….

…break out the Nebulizer.

If you don’t know what that is, it’s a vaporizer type machine that delivers medicine to your lungs needed when having asthmatic problems. The medicine in question is Albuterol Sulphate, the same stuff inside inhalers. The difference is that inhalers are a “quick fix” and Nebulizers are a slow and steady treatment. Put in the liquid medicine, turn on the machine, put the mask on your face and breath deep for a while.

And that’s what we did, or that was the plan anyway. Her coughing was really bad, to the point she started to wheeze a bit. So we shortly found ourselves camped out on the couch downstairs, watching tv as I set up the Nebulizer. As soon as it was all put together, I plopped down on the couch next to her and started it up. She knows how it works. She grabs a hold of it by the handle, puts the mask over her face and takes a few deep breaths before just breathing normally. She knows how it works, she knows that she needs it.

I’ve heard all the horror stories about toddlers, and even lived some of them. But the thing other parents don’t tell you, back when you are about to have a kid of your own, is how compassionate they become early on.

The plan was to give her a treatment first, then my turn. But that wasn’t what she went with. Instead she recognized that I needed it too, that Daddy was sick too, and insisted that we share. After taking a couple of deep breaths, she held the mask up to my face and waited for me to take a few breaths of my own before returning it to her own face, and so on. She was sharing, and she was caring.

It’s not the first time she’s shown this sort of care. More often than not when my Wife or I are sad or feeling sick, she is there to comfort us in her own way. Give us hugs, offer us toys, cuddle up next to us. But last night was different.

I wasn’t sure if she was going to be into it or not. A few times before she’s been afraid of the machine at first and has needed some sort of coercion to get started on it. Not this time.

The mistake we make all to often as adults is not taking kids seriously. Adults seem to think that just cause they are young and may not know all the things we know means that they are sub-human in a way. This is not the case. Sometimes they get it better than we do, in fact. They don’t have their judgment clouded by years of good/bad experiences. They make decisions based on natural compulsion more than learned reaction. In that, they are in a way, more advanced than we adults in the way of human compassion and love.

Maybe we don’t always feel their love…but it’s always there.

Anyway…..gonna spend our day inside today, where Daddy will be drinking hot tea and eating soup while “the bubs” watches TV and snacks on whatever she wants. Well…..ALMOST whatever she wants.
-Ben

@BKMullen_

@PBDadcast