Another Day in the Life of Me

Yesterday we woke up with frozen pipes. Frozen pipes=no water. FUN! I love it when that happens.

Not really.

Since we had no water, and it was 15*, there was no way I could do laundry. I loaded up our baskets and headed out again to the laundromat. This time I chose to go the extra mile (literally) and drive to a small town on the other side of the lake. I walked into he laundromat with memories of going there for a year with Kacy and Will when they were two and one, and I was pregnant (and puking) with Ed. Yuck. But I walked in and guess what? It was clean. The machines were numbered. There were nine dryers, with only ONE out of order. That machine had a typed and taped message stating that! No Sharpie messages with misspellings! No holes in the ceiling! No dead guy in the very clean bathroom! Ryan told me that the laundromat that burnt my clothes had an incident where a dead guy was found in the bathroom. Not killed, just dead. Lovely little place it is. This other place was positively palatial compared to the last dump. They even had hot/warm water... it's been a long time since my clothes have been washed in water other than cold. My clothes look cleaner!
While the clothes did their thing, the kids and I spent some quality time in the car. I lectured (and lectured) Will about behaving in school. He got his card pulled three times yesterday. (Last week he got into a fight on the bus... a Kindergarten fight. All over the fact that the boy he was sitting next to took a drawing Will had done for Ryan and ripped it. Will "got so mad" that he pushed him. The kid pushed back. It was a pushing match until Will's head ended up against a window with a big ol' goose egg. I'm shaking my head just thinking about it.) Ed played video games for awhile, Kacy drew in her art binder, and Jessie slept. After I put the clothes into the dryers (anxiously, but with some hope that it was statistically impossible for my clothes to catch fire twice in my lifetime), we went next door to the little grocery store and got some mojos and Gatorade. Ed happened to cough while walking in the parking lot and and older man said, "My two little grandson's sound just like that. It sounds awful! Poor guys."
"He woke up with that this morning. It's weird how sudden it was." I replied.

Because it was all of a sudden, and because he didn't cough that often. But when he did, he sounded like a seal barking.

We finished at the laundromat, with dry, mostly folded clothes, and a huge sigh of relief. It turned out not to be so bad! We went to the main small town and purchased four gallons of water for flushing the toilet, washing faces and hands, drinking... all the things you need water for. It amazing how many time I tried rinsing something in the kitchen sink, just out of habit. We then stopped at Little Caesars's Pizza, because with no running water, I am NOT washing dishes. I have done it before, which is why if I didn't have to, I was not going to do it again. I just didn't feel like camping! Ed fell asleep while we were waiting for our "Hot and Ready" pizzas. It took 25 minutes to get them. Something about the oven being on "the fritz." We made the trip home, and when I woke Ed up, he started crying. After a minute of his being upset he started having trouble breathing. I was staring at him, trying to listen to his breathing, and started wondering what to do. I started looking for a thermometer. That was dumb. Then I thought about giving him a hit off of my inhaler, but wasn't sure about medicating him myself when I didn't know what was wrong. Then (this all took about 20 seconds), I called Ryan.
"Hey, I think I may be taking Ed into Urgent Care. Listen to him, he can't catch his breath."

I held the phone to Ed's face and Ryan tells me to get in the car and go to the emergency room, and that he'll meet me there. I get everyone strapped in, and we SPEED to the highway. I live 20-25 minutes from the crappy ER. Ryan was speeding in the opposite direction out to meet us. We pull over to the side of the road, and Ryan checks him out. I'm so grateful for Ryan's calming influence on my personality, and for his EMT training. Being strapped in the car and tired from lack of oxygen made Ed look listless, and he wasn't gasping for air anymore. He kept saying his belly hurt when Ryan was asking him what was wrong. We made the decision that we could make it to Bakersfield (sigh of relief), with Ryan saying, "If he does stop breathing, you have to make it to cell reception and call. You know how to do CPR, right? Do what you have to do, but I don't think you'll have a problem. He'll be okay." My brain stopped at "stop breathing." I don't think it helped at all that I have had asthma stuff and know exactly what that feels like.
Ed seemed "okay" enough, so we did stop at McDonald's and bought Ed a Coke. Caffeine dilates bronchial tubes, and will sometimes work in a pinch if you don't have an inhaler. He ended up not drinking it, or wanting to eat the pizza the kids were eating in the car. We made it to Urgent Care, where my mom met me and took the other three home with her. I'm glad she lives fairly close and keeps car seats in her spare car, all ready to go.
Ed has croup. They gave him some steroids and a breathing treatment. He thought the breathing treatment was funny because it was "smoking" out the end and he could make it puff.
We left the awesome urgent care and went to get all his prescriptions filled- antibiotics, steroids, and an inhaler. This is where things got pee-in-your-pants funny for me. Ed couldn't hold still. He was dancing. He was twirling, shaking his bootie, and singing things like, "Jingle bells, batman smells, how I wonder what you are!" in a very throaty, rock in roll kind of voice. This went on for a full 15 minutes! In the car he got the munchies and had two pieces of pizza and some of his Coke. The boy has a hard time holding still anyway, but the breathing treatment made him start tweaking.
I came home and looked up croup, and it is described exactly how I stated his symptoms to the doctor, which was slightly amusing. It was like I was reading from a textbook, except that I hadn't known about croup before. I think I remember that cousin Jeremy and Eliza's baby had it once, I think. But that's it. It also made me feel better looking it up because I kept thinking really bad things, like how the kids who die from swine flu have respiratory complications and it's all of a sudden, or of walking pneumonia, which is how Jim Henson (Muppets) died. I do have faith in and trust doctor's generally , but I also believe you should be your own best advocate. I'll take the croup over the other things! I take Ed back tomorrow to get checked on again. Today he seems to be doing lots better!

I'm going to look for a CPR first aid class.