Mama's Dramas

Tuesday, May 22, 2012

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.

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