Day Before Miami

So, one day BigGeek decided to take us all to Miami. Ok, the story is slightly more complicated than that, and shall be narrated in due course, when the time is ripe. So, as it happened, we had tickets and hotel and a car to go to Miami on the 14 of this month. It was a last minute thing and we had no clue what we wanted to do, except of course go and see the biggest swamp or rather, the river of grass - The Everglades. May be sun a bit on the famous South Beach (while trying best not to get the spirits dampened by the supermodels and sculpted bodies) and generally get away from the freezing temperatures here by heading towards the sub-tropical paradise, where the palms swayed gently in the breeze and the blue skies and the azul ocean beckoned. And of course try and practice my Spanish.

If something is too good to be true, it prolly is. So, said a wise man once. Ok, it really was BigGeek, but he is wise, you know. On Thursday, when I went to pick up Chip from the daycare, his teacher told me, he had been wheezing a bit. No problem, I thought. He had a bad cold and the fluctuating temperatures had not done him any good. A whiff or two of the broncho-dilators and he would be good as new. But, no. Thursday night, despite the bronco-dilators, his asthma worsened. I gave him a steady dose of the bronco-dilators every 4 hours, all night, but the wheezing would go down for an hour, only to come back with a vengeance. I have him some anti-histamine, and some homep, but the poor buy could not sleep. He wheezed and gasped and by early morning, his heart was beating rapid-fire. He was hyperventilating. His lungs, unable to oxygenate his blood, was making his heart pump it faster so all the cells in his body got proper oxygen.

When it was morning, I called his doctor and headed there immediately. The doctor said his lungs were quite hard and his blood oxygenation had dropped and he had been hyperventilating. The plane ride would be dangerous for him in this state, said his doctor. Lung collapse could occur because of the low pressure in the cabin. I was worried sick. This sounded a lot more serious than a mild asthma he often gets. The doctor put him on a strong dose of inhaled steroids and bronco-dilators through a nebulizer – right in his office. (Chip who does not use a nebulizer, but uses a metered dose inhaler was wide-eyed at seeing one. “This is just like House”, he exclaimed) 40 minutes later, the doctor checked Chip again. He was looking better. Sounding better. Very little wheezing. But since we were travelling, he also gave Chip of an oral steroid. Just to be safe.

But Chip was in a bad shape. The wheezing came back in 4 hours and another round of bronco-dilators was administered through the nebulizer. Add to that, BigGeek’s sciatica which has been troubling him for a couple of months now, had graduated to numbing feet and then to numbing hands which was definitely not sciatica related. Too much sickness in the air. I did not want to go to Miami. It seemed jinxed, you know. BigGeek scoffed at my superstitions and an exhausted mom, a limping dad and a cranky, asthmatic child boarded the plane next day to see if Miami did them any good.