....again.

I worked a total of about 23 hours last weekend, driving from house to house, answering phone calls, faxing, charting, and missing my family. Michael called on Sunday afternoon as I buried myself in paperwork at the office.

"Are you coming home soon?" he asked.

"Uh, no?" I said, aching to go home and see my boys big and small. They had returned from Mankato, and Michael sounded eager for my return. After the second phone call, I asked, "is something wrong?"

"Do you really want to know?"

No. "Yes."

"Oliver's really sick."

I threw everything in my bag and headed home, answering more work-related pages and phone calls as I flew down Cedar Avenue. I had another visit to do. And I had a very sick kid at home. I called my Dad and suggested it would be helpful to have him drive to Lakeville, to help manage whatever we'd be facing.

I walked in to find Oliver working hard to breathe. His tummy pulled in, using its muscles to try to move air. He lay limp in Michael's arms, and when he saw me, all he could muster after our long weekend of being apart was a weak smile. My boys lay together bare-chested, as Michael told me how Oliver had thrown up quite violently, as evidenced by the clothes, blankets and towels piled high in the bathroom. I tearfully took my boy into my arms and held him. While answering another phone call, Oliver threw up again, out his nose and mouth, and we both sat in puddles of formula and prunes as I tried to wrap up the call.

My Dad arrived to find us all surrounded by towels. "I wouldn't even look in that bathroom," I warned him. I announced to everyone that after I made my next home visit, we would be taking Oliver into the ER. I left Grandpa holding Ollie in his arms, singing softly into his ear.

Let me tell you something about being a nurse and a mother. You know what constitutes a visit to the ER for everyone else's kid. That's easy. But there's always a nagging paranoia when it comes to your own kid: "maybe they'll just send him home. Maybe I'm overacting. What will they do there that I'm not doing here?" And then on the other side of the spectrum, "what if I wait too long? What if he ends up too sick because I tried to manage things on my own?" After these conversations with myself, I stopped and just looked at Oliver. He was not himself. He was limp. He was not breathing well. It was time to go in, again.

My instinct was right. When we walked through the doors, it was not more than 2 minutes before we were fast-tracked out of the waiting room and into the treatment rooms. Oliver's oxygen saturations- (the numbers that measure how well you're breathing by determining how much oxygen is in your bloodstream, which should be 97-100%-) were at 85%. The triage nurse asked if she could take him, and then with Ollie in her arms, she whisked all three of us through the doors and called through the hallways, "we need oxygen, what room has an oxygen set-up?" We landed into a room where we met with the ED physician a mere minute later. The evening was spent getting four back-to-back, nearly constant, breathing (nebulizer) treatments, oxygen, an x-ray, an IV, and medications. The IV start took three excrutiating attempts, which was possibly more painful for us than it was for Oliver. He lay in my lap on the guerney, my Dad and Michael sitting next to us, and we all held, touched, and tried to soothe. I began to cry.

Last week, I was talking to the mother of one of my patients, who was telling me about how she knows instictively when her son is sick. Before anyone else can diagnose it, she sees it, and feels it.

"When he has pain, I have pain," she told me. "Do you have children?"

Yes," I answered.

"Then you know."

I wanted so desperately that night to be poked and messed with, to feel miserable, to struggle to breathe, in Oliver's place. Please, please, I begged in my head. Just stop making my kid cry, and do these things to me instead.

We were admitted back to the 6th floor, where we resided for nearly a week in Jaunary with RSV, and where Oliver's Mommy met Oliver's Daddy 6 years ago when they worked the night shift together. (Note: that's not a euphanism. We really did work the night shift together). We knew the drill: steroids, frequent neb treatments, oxygen, IV fluids, antibiotics. An intermittently sad and understandibly fussy child. Long days that flow into each other, nights with minimal sleep. And again, the support of family and friends, bringing facebook messages, food, and phone calls.

Our stay was shorter than last time. Because this was Oliver's second hospital admission with severe breathing issues, we went home with a new prescription for "controller" nebs, an inhaled steroid medication that we will be giving twice daily to help prevent episodes. It is strongly suspected that Oliver may have athsma. It might just be that his lungs are still recovering from the RSV, but when physicians ask about a history of athsma in the family and I point to myself, they nod and say, "ooooh." It feels pretty crappy that I have likely passed on a chronic lung disease to my child. Oliver has Michael's eyes, and he has my athsma. Nice.

Michael had to go into work on our last day in the hospital, so I brought the little guy home.

As we walked into the house, I began to sob. Ollie didn't even notice; he just waved at kitty and babbled to his nuk. But I was a slobbering mess, the adrenaline now wearing off from the week. I told Oliver that I was so sorry he got sick, that he got poked and messed with, that he felt crappy from his medicines, and that I have probably given him athsma. I was so, so sorry that he had to go through that again. But the blessed truth lies in the resilience that kids have. When he has pain, I have pain. But he moves past it a lot quicker than I do. I have a lot to learn from him.