Family Snippets - 4. One Scary Night

“I don’t... wanna... die.”

The tortured words were forced out between ragged gasps as Andrew struggled for each breath.

Janine and I stared in horror at each other before returning our attention to the four-year-old on my lap. It was just after midnight, and Andrew was having what appeared to be a severe asthma attack. It had started maybe thirty minutes before.

After trying unsuccessfully to give him Ventolin while he was in his bed, I had picked him up and carried him out to the couch in the living room. I was hoping that I could soothe him enough that he wouldn’t resist having the mask put over his face. That was when he forced out the words that had horrified my wife and I. Our son thought he was dying.

It wasn’t as if I couldn’t appreciate why he was struggling. After all, if you have having trouble getting enough air into your lungs, the last thing you want is to have something put over your nose and mouth. It had been too long since his last asthma attack – he’d forgotten that the face mask and spacer contraption would help us administer the medicine that would help him.

Eventually, by holding his arms against his body, and restraining his head, we managed to give him some Ventolin. It made some difference, I thought, but his breathing was still tortured, as his whole body would heave with the struggle to get enough air into his chest.

“Should we call an ambulance?” Janine asked me, concerned for our youngest son.

“What’s his asthma plan say?”

While I cradled Andrew in my arms, rocking gently to try to soothe him, she hunted down that piece of paper we’d been given when Andrew had been first diagnosed as asthmatic.

Together, we checked it out.

“It says if he needs Ventolin more than three-hourly, or if we’re still concerned after giving it to him, take him to the hospital or call an ambulance,” I read out aloud.

We both looked at our little boy. The decision was easy.

Janine rang the emergency services. At one point, she brought the phone over to Andrew and held it near, so the person on the other end could hear him still struggling to breathe.

I saw her give a visible sigh of relief as she was told that an ambulance was being sent. She started to give instructions on how to get to our house, when she changed her mind.

“I’ll meet them at the corner,” she announced into the phone, before ending the call.

I agreed with her. We live down a private road, and it is not easy to find our house unless you have been there before, or have been given clear and written directions. After midnight, with an emergency on our hands, we couldn’t afford to have time wasted by the ambulance showing up at the wrong house.

While Janine headed out, I lay Andrew down on a floor and covered him up. While he was still struggling, he was also drifting off to sleep. I didn’t know if this was good or not, but his breathing was clearly audible, and I kept a careful ear on that critical sound while I cleared a space around him. I expected the paramedics to want room, and having toys scattered everywhere wasn’t going to help them.

Once I was finished I just sat next to him, slowly stroking his blonde hair as I waited... and waited.

We love living out in the countryside, but one major disadvantage was that the nearest hospital with an emergency department was thirty minutes away. Janine and I had quickly discussed it before we called the ambulance, and had vetoed the idea of driving there ourselves. It would have taken both of us – one to drive and one to sit next to Andrew and make sure he was alright. That meant we would also have had to take Colin, who had remained sound asleep through all of this.

When the ambulance arrived, the two female paramedics quickly and professionally checked out Andrew. That’s when we learnt that it didn’t appear to be asthma.

“It sounds like it’s more in his throat than his chest,” she remarked, glancing up to where I was hovering nearby.

“His brother had croup a few days ago,” I quickly stated, “but we didn’t think it was that because Andrew didn’t have a croup cough.”

Croup was a disease we knew well, as both boys had had it previously; Colin more than once. A throat infection, it manifests as laryngitis in adults, but in young children the swelling can restrict the size of the airway, and also causes a very distinctive cough, like a bark. Colin spent his first Christmas Eve in the emergency ward at the Royal Childrens Hospital with a severe croup attack. He had another croup attack the following year when we were on holidays in Queensland.

This time, Colin merely had the cough and no other ill-effects. His throat was now large enough that the swelling didn’t have an appreciable impact on his ability to breathe. I had assumed that Andrew was also old enough, but maybe not.

Andrew was taken out to the ambulance and had a mask placed over his nose and mouth. They started to give him oxygen, and then nebulised adrenalin – treatments both boys had had previously in hospital for both croup and asthma.

Janine went with Andrew while I stayed home with Colin. I was lucky he’s a sound sleeper; he never woke up through the whole episode.

It was now just after one o’clock in the morning. I didn’t see the point in trying to get back to sleep. I didn’t know if I’d be getting a phone call, asking me to bring in something, or just with a status report. Instead, I sat down at the computer, put the phone next to me, and connected to the internet.

My first job was a message to my boss, telling him what was going on and telling him I wouldn’t be in the next day. Checking my emails, I found a couple of issues that needed urgent attention, so I replied with an explanation of why I couldn’t do them, and forwarded them to workmates who might’ve been able to help. After that, I forgot about work.

I spent the next couple of hours chatting with a friend in the USA. Another father with children the same age as ours, I unloaded myself on him. I’m sure I wasn’t totally rational at that point, but just being able to tell someone helped calm me down.

At three o’clock, I rang the hospital. Andrew had been bright and cheerful in the ambulance, but deteriorated again once he was in the emergency ward. Three times they’d given him adrenalin, and he was fine – until it wore off. Janine told me that they were going to transfer him to the ICU at the Royal Childrens Hospital. This was not news to make me feel better.

I found out afterwards that this was normal procedure. Anyone who needs three doses of adrenalin in the Emergency ward is transferred to the Intensive Care Unit. If at all possible, paediatric patients are sent to the ICU at the Childrens, as they have the specialist staff not available at other hospitals.

While I had Janine on the phone, I settled the details of what I had to do in the morning. I would need to get Colin ready for school and then take him down to the bus. Janine had suggested just keeping him from school for the day, but I pointed out that it was going to be easier to have him at school, rather than having him tag along while I did anything else that needed to be done.

By five o’clock, I had made Colin’s lunch, checked and packed his school bag, and had sorted out the clothes he would be wearing. I was supposed to wake him just before seven. I then proceeded to pack a change of clothes for Andrew. He’d gone in his pajamas, but he’d need a change of clothes to come home in. Unfortunately, Andrew and Colin are close to being the same size. Rather than take the risk of accidentally taking his brother’s clothes, I packed about three sets of everything – between them, there should be at least one complete set he’d be able to wear.

When I went into his room, I told Colin that Andrew and his mum were at the hospital, and that I’d be getting him ready for school.

“Now, I haven’t done this before, so I’m going to need your help,” I told him. “Can you help me get you ready for school?”

He gave me a grin and nodded his head.

First, I knew, was food. “What do you want eat for breakfast?”

He tilted his head to one side as he thought seriously on the matter. “Cheesy rice,” he eventually proclaimed.

Luckily, I was able to translate this. Janine had mentioned previously that he’d sometimes had a packet of microwaved instant macaroni and cheese for breakfast. Find the packet, I checked with Colin before I cooked it. It was right: this was what he wanted.

“Clean teeth?” I asked when he’d finished eating.

“No!” he told me sternly. “I have to make my bed, first.”

“Okay,” I said, as I accompanied him into his bedroom. Pulling up the sheet and doona cover was a lot simplier than I used to do when I was a kid, but then he’d only six. We couldn’t expect a lot and getting him used to doing chores was a big reason we wanted him to make his own bed. For that strenuous task, we gave him twenty cents. As he grew older, he’d get more chores, and more money. For now, it was just a case of getting him used to the concepts.

“Now it’s time to clean my teeth,” he told me.

After that, he got himself dressed. While he did that, I rang the Royal Childrens Hospital. I tracked my wife and son down to the ICU ward.

“We’ve only just arrived,” Janine told me, “and he’s doing fine. You’d barely know he was sick.”

“That’s good,” I said with honest relief. He was in the best place in the state if anything happened – surrounded by paediatric specialists twenty-four hours a day.

“He was so cheerful in the ambulance trip between the hospitals, he asked if they could put the lights and siren on,” Janine chuckled. “They indulged him, so we ended up going through red lights and everything!”

At that time of the morning, it wouldn’t have hurt and it helped keep up the spirits of a little four-year-old boy. I said a silent “thank you” to that unknown driver.

Soon afterwards, I got Colin into the car. Continuing my charade of needing his help, and so keeping him distracted from his missing brother and mum, I told him I didn’t know where I had to take him.

He held up his right arm. “Is this my right arm?”

“Yes it is,” I replied.

He sat in the back seat staring intently at first his right arm, then his left, before nodding to himself.

As we left the private road, he piped up, “Now right up the hill, Daddy.”

“Thank you, Colin,” I replied gratefully. I had suspected that was the way Janine would have taken him, but it was nice to have it confirmed.

“Now left at that street,” Colin ordered, pointing up ahead. I knew the bus stop was just near the end of that street.

Driving down, and getting ready to turn the corner at the end where the bus stop was, Colin suddenly yelled out.

“You’ve gone too far!”

I quickly stopped and reversed back to where Colin informed me, “Mummy always parks, here”.

Even then I did it wrong. As I helped him out of the car, Colin frowned at me. “Mummy parks her car this way,” indicating with his hands that she drove onto the grass and parked nose first to the footpath. I had parked parallel, instead.

“It’s alright, Colin,” I said soothingly. “My car is smaller than Mummy’s, and so I can park it this way.”

At that age, things have to be done exactly right, or it’s just not good enough. After taking a berating from my six-year-old son for “doing it wrong”, I walked him around the corner to the bus stop.

After he boarded, I couldn’t help grinning back at my smiling son, as he sat by the window at the front of the bus. I waved to him, and he waved back. This was the first time I’d seen him go on the bus by himself, and it was clear he was proud to show me how confident he was at doing it.

I then headed to the hospital: almost an hour and a half away. It could be done quicker than that, but I was hitting the end of peak hour traffic, and that made a huge difference.

When I arrived, Andrew was sleeping. His breathing was normal and he looked incredibly comfortable. Janine, on the other hand, looked exhausted. I gave her a hug of thanks and welcome. After getting an update on what was going on, I took her downstairs to the canteen for a coffee and a doughnut. I offered her breakfast, but she wasn’t hungry – a combination of stress, worry and general tiredness.

When we returned to the ICU, Andrew was awake, and starting to watch Chicken Run on a TV the nurses had wheeled around for him.

“Daddy!” he called out cheerfully as he saw me.

“Hi, Andrew,” I replied, as I leant over and gave him a cautious hug – trying to avoid displacing any of the wires they were using to monitor his heartbeat and oxygen absorption levels.

“I love you, Daddy,” he said while returning the hug.

“I love you, too,” I whispered back to him.

He was going to be alright.