Adventures in Parenthood and Weather
Never a dull moment.
Yesterday we were home for my grandfather's 85th birthday party...Happy Birthday Pop-Pop!!! At the same time I had dropped my car off at my dad's so he could fix a broken engine mount while we were at my mom's house for the party...so we were traveling with two cars. While I was home I was also re-formatting my mom's laptop...busy day. All day we were listening to the news about the big storm coming from the coast. We knew we needed to get on the road but the weather, where we were (2 hours from the coast in PA), didn't look bad and I figured if it started to look bad we would just stay at my dad's house (we had to go there first and pick up the Taurus).
We finally left my mom's around 7 PM. When we got to my dad's there were just a few innocent looking flakes starting to occaisionally fall from the cold sky. Dad had fixed the engine mount, replaced the windshield wipers, filled the washer fluid and changed the oil. Thanks Dad!!!! We decided that we wanted to just get home and sleep in our own beds so we hit the road.
When we got to Philly, it was snowing but not laying...the roads were just wet. We continued on heading right into the storm with Carisa in the Honda with the kids following behind me as I drove the Taurus.
As we crossed the Walt Whitman Bridge heading toward Atlantic City it was coming down fast and beginning to lay. At this point, we could still see the lines on the road but as we continued to travel, a drive that normally takes two hours, the snow began coming faster and faster until we could no longer see the lines on the road and the cars out there became fewer and fewer. Eventually we were on the Atlantic City Expressway going 35 mph, traveling deeper into the storm, only able to guess where the road was by judging where the middle was by the Pinelands on either side. Each of us had our blinkers on to help us keep track of the other.
White knuckling the steering wheel, Carisa and I had the occasional cell phone conversation verging on panic and talked down with calm words that we were "almost there" and "would make it by taking our time". The snow was falling so hard that as you watched it continuously blowing sideways in the beams of the headlights it would begin to mess with your vision until it felt as if you couldn't see anymore and you would have to find something to look away to in order to break the spell.
With the 2 hour drive now pushing 3 hours we were crawling along at 25 mph on the expressway; getting closer to our exit nerve wracking mile after mile. Once we arrived and I thought it was over I found that the exit had not yet been plowed and I went from memory that the actual exit normally comes before the exit sign? Making a guess as to where the exit was (the smooth white snow between the tree?) we continued on; trying not to stop for fear that we would not get started again. Traveling on the last road home felt like traveling through a snow tunnel with visibility extending only a car length out in front.
When I got home I planned on hugging my wife and kissing the carpet, but as I was getting Jack out of the car he woke up into a coughing fit, the kind that has occaisionally overcome him before where he coughs so much he vomits, and cannot breath. He was hysterically crying and wheezing for his breath, arms trembling out in front of him as I rushed him into the house directly to the bathroom. While shutting the door and throwing the shower on high heat to generate some steam I tried to convince him that he needed to stop being so upset; tried to rationalize to my 3-year old that if he just calmed down, he would be able to breath again. Carisa started a nebulizer (steroids) treatment we had from one of his previous episodes when he had been hospitalized. When that was done Carisa wrapped him in a blanket and took him into the cold air outside, but the blowing snow soon drove them back in.
Did he have to go to the emergency room? Did I have to take the car back out into the storm?
As Carisa and I pretended to be calm so that he would become calm, we called the Children's Hospital (CHOP) and I spoke with a nurse who sounded almost as anxious as I was pretending not to be. She told us that it sounded like the croup and not an asthma attack and that the 5-10 minutes we had him in the steam was not enough and we needed to do 20. If he was still having trouble breathing after that, we would discuss different options.
Thankfully, after spending 20 minutes in steam so thick that all was dripping, we brought him to our bed and turned on the TV. His breathing seemed better. At least he was in better spirits and talking to us as if nothing was wrong between breaths slightly tainted with wheeze. We watched TV with him until midnight at which point we turned off the light to go to bed; to spent the rest of the night restlessly tossing and turning, listening to his breathing in fear that it wasn't over.
Jack slept through the night (Lili was of course a different story) and we awoke to a bright snowy blizzard still ongoing. From the double stress of the night I had a knot in my back that made it hurt to breath. Besides from being exhausted, everyone had made it and we were home. Now it's just another day.
Never a dull moment.
More News
Yesterday we were home for my grandfather's 85th birthday party...Happy Birthday Pop-Pop!!! At the same time I had dropped my car off at my dad's so he could fix a broken engine mount while we were at my mom's house for the party...so we were traveling with two cars. While I was home I was also re-formatting my mom's laptop...busy day. All day we were listening to the news about the big storm coming from the coast. We knew we needed to get on the road but the weather, where we were (2 hours from the coast in PA), didn't look bad and I figured if it started to look bad we would just stay at my dad's house (we had to go there first and pick up the Taurus).
We finally left my mom's around 7 PM. When we got to my dad's there were just a few innocent looking flakes starting to occaisionally fall from the cold sky. Dad had fixed the engine mount, replaced the windshield wipers, filled the washer fluid and changed the oil. Thanks Dad!!!! We decided that we wanted to just get home and sleep in our own beds so we hit the road.
When we got to Philly, it was snowing but not laying...the roads were just wet. We continued on heading right into the storm with Carisa in the Honda with the kids following behind me as I drove the Taurus.
As we crossed the Walt Whitman Bridge heading toward Atlantic City it was coming down fast and beginning to lay. At this point, we could still see the lines on the road but as we continued to travel, a drive that normally takes two hours, the snow began coming faster and faster until we could no longer see the lines on the road and the cars out there became fewer and fewer. Eventually we were on the Atlantic City Expressway going 35 mph, traveling deeper into the storm, only able to guess where the road was by judging where the middle was by the Pinelands on either side. Each of us had our blinkers on to help us keep track of the other.
White knuckling the steering wheel, Carisa and I had the occasional cell phone conversation verging on panic and talked down with calm words that we were "almost there" and "would make it by taking our time". The snow was falling so hard that as you watched it continuously blowing sideways in the beams of the headlights it would begin to mess with your vision until it felt as if you couldn't see anymore and you would have to find something to look away to in order to break the spell.
With the 2 hour drive now pushing 3 hours we were crawling along at 25 mph on the expressway; getting closer to our exit nerve wracking mile after mile. Once we arrived and I thought it was over I found that the exit had not yet been plowed and I went from memory that the actual exit normally comes before the exit sign? Making a guess as to where the exit was (the smooth white snow between the tree?) we continued on; trying not to stop for fear that we would not get started again. Traveling on the last road home felt like traveling through a snow tunnel with visibility extending only a car length out in front.
When I got home I planned on hugging my wife and kissing the carpet, but as I was getting Jack out of the car he woke up into a coughing fit, the kind that has occaisionally overcome him before where he coughs so much he vomits, and cannot breath. He was hysterically crying and wheezing for his breath, arms trembling out in front of him as I rushed him into the house directly to the bathroom. While shutting the door and throwing the shower on high heat to generate some steam I tried to convince him that he needed to stop being so upset; tried to rationalize to my 3-year old that if he just calmed down, he would be able to breath again. Carisa started a nebulizer (steroids) treatment we had from one of his previous episodes when he had been hospitalized. When that was done Carisa wrapped him in a blanket and took him into the cold air outside, but the blowing snow soon drove them back in.
Did he have to go to the emergency room? Did I have to take the car back out into the storm?
As Carisa and I pretended to be calm so that he would become calm, we called the Children's Hospital (CHOP) and I spoke with a nurse who sounded almost as anxious as I was pretending not to be. She told us that it sounded like the croup and not an asthma attack and that the 5-10 minutes we had him in the steam was not enough and we needed to do 20. If he was still having trouble breathing after that, we would discuss different options.
Thankfully, after spending 20 minutes in steam so thick that all was dripping, we brought him to our bed and turned on the TV. His breathing seemed better. At least he was in better spirits and talking to us as if nothing was wrong between breaths slightly tainted with wheeze. We watched TV with him until midnight at which point we turned off the light to go to bed; to spent the rest of the night restlessly tossing and turning, listening to his breathing in fear that it wasn't over.
Jack slept through the night (Lili was of course a different story) and we awoke to a bright snowy blizzard still ongoing. From the double stress of the night I had a knot in my back that made it hurt to breath. Besides from being exhausted, everyone had made it and we were home. Now it's just another day.
Never a dull moment.
More News
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