All's Fair In Love And Chocolate

Here I am again, back with excuses. I have had a sick daycare baby all week (Remember Mucous Boy? He's even mucousier.) and all he has wanted to do was sit in my lap and rock. And rock. And rock some more. And just when I think he is asleep and I can put him down? He wakes up and cries. And makes me rock. I'm feeling kind of sea-sick.

He is now on breathing treatments, and I swear he thinks I am poisoning him. Every time we get close to breathing treatment time, I break out in a cold sweat. The child goes BALISTIC. The first day, his mother told me that I had I had to put the breathing treatment thingy (this is actual medical terminology, y'all.) in his mouth, which would be fine if he did not see it coming and clamp his mouth shut as if he had jaws of iron. I pleaded and begged and got firm and then went back to pleading, and I FINALLY got his mouth open enough to get the thingy in there, only to have him clamp his mouth shut on THAT and make me beg to get it back out again. All the while, he is arching his back and screaming (I do not know how he was managing to scream without opening his mouth. The child is talented.) When I turned on the machine (that looks deceptively like an adorable koala bear) and steam started coming out of it, Owen took one horrified look at us and ran up the stairs, screaming "RUN! IT'S GONNA BLOW!" I'm not sure if he meant the machine or Mucous Boy.

When I was telling his father about all of this, I wondered aloud to him if maybe perhaps Mucous Boy had asthma, and he nodded. "Probably," he said. "He's just like me, so far. See, I only have one lung." And then, with no warning, he proceeded to pull his shirt up to his neck and show me a really huge scar on his side. I did not know quite what to say. But now I am wondering...what in the world is he talking about? I have never heard of someone having a lung removed because of asthma. One would think that would make breathing even more of an effort, would you not? I should have asked more questions, but I was so startled by his sudden turn for the naked on my porch in mid December that I could not form the words. I am not good at thinking on my feet when confronted by chest hair.

Oh! And after two days of complete hysteria? His mother tells me yesterday that it is actually fine to just hold the breathing treatment thingy up to the child's face. As long as he is breathing the medication in, it's fine. Poor baby. I've traumatized him for nothing. He will probably have an irrational fear of koala bears for the rest of his life.

And I will have an irrational fear of over-sharing men with one lung. Thankfully, neither koala bears or one-lunged men are in abundance here in Georgia.

At least, I hope not.