watching and waiting

Lukas is asleep on the couch next to me.  He was fitful all night.  His breathing is labored and he groans or whinces at times.  I watch the rapid rise and suck of his belly.  This is a familiar image.  Ever since he was born he has had problems with his breathing.  Nights spent out on the porch with him wrapped in a blanket as a 4 month old because we thought he had croup or the day we drove out to the doctors on a Saturday with a blue lipped two year old who was staggering his speech.  Last night I lay beside him, alert, aware of what a struggle it was for him to breathe and pained by the responsibility.  Jorg is away.  He just left yesterday morning for work in Chicago.  Do I wake sleeping Julien and exhausted Lukas and drag them to the emergency room or do I wait and risk it?  Lukas has a doctors appointment in 1 hour and it can't come fast enough.  Julien is asleep upstairs and Lukas just groans and sighs next to me. I find myself holding my breath as I watch him struggle and I imagine how scary it must be to not be able to really breathe....to feel as if you are suffocating slowly.  How can a boy who was racing around Shelburne Farms yesterday be so debilitated today?  What fragile things our bodies are.  I find myself imagining what life would have been like 100 years ago. While I am not eager to give him steroids....something that I know they will do because they have done it before.... I find myself deeply grateful for modern medicine.  Anything....give him anything to let him breathe and play again.  How powerless to be a mother of a sick child when there is no medicine to relieve him.  How priveldged we are to sit minutes from medice just waiting and watching.