The Breathing of a Nine Year Old

As the days have remained warm, my kids have suddenly gotten a cough and the sniffles that adds up to a cold. I took one boy to the minute clinic just to make sure it wasn't a sinus infection, his cough had gotten worse, and his snot was worse and things seemed to need dealt with. They said "it's allergies maybe a cold, move along, move along."

I think all parents have their thing though. My "thing" is, I have to be able to hear them breathe. I can tell who is coughing, who is snoring, who is mumbling in their sleep from the next room. It was hard sleeping in the earplugs some nights for just this reason, I couldn't hear them breathe.

As new babies, they slept next to me in bassinets where the rhythm of their breathing was my lullaby. The sound of my children breathing in sleep is one of the most comforting, relaxing sounds in the world to me.

Then you can image my surprise when, on going in to lay down with the twins who had decided to start screaming at 6am, I heard the most horrible rattling from the 9 year old's lungs. I could hear the fluid, hear the bronchial tubes failing to fill, as he sucked in his air too fast and too hard over and over.

I got him his inhaler and felt his forehead and he mumbled that his lungs hurt.

He went back to sleep, breathing only slightly better, and I lay down below him on the bunk covered in 8 year old twins. But instead of sleeping, I was listening. Listening to him breathe.

I'm asthmatic. It's my terror, not to be able to breathe, to drown in my own lungs, to be gasping for air with lungs that just won't work. I hate it that I passed that along to my sweet and gentle boy but I did.

Sure as you like, we ended up at Children's Hospital of Atlanta a short time later where they immediately confirmed that he'd gone to pneumonia. As quick as that, overnight, from just a bit congested to pneumonia.

My poor boy spent his Labor Day weekend laid up, not having fun, and taking medicine that was liquid instead of pills - his manhood was insulted I believe. He's 9 you know. He can swallow pills. I've been reminded this 500 times.

I think since he's bitching, he must be getting better.

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