home truths
by MATTHEW MILLS
HEALTHY RESPECT
There was drama in the Mills household in the dead of night - and not for the first time, Matthew Mills was eternally grateful for the team of medics who came to his family’s aid. THE MORNING AFTER, as Oli happily munched on rice crispies, eyes glued to the wall-mounted flat-screen TV, he could have been in a hotel room on the first day of a long-anticipated holiday. He’d woken up five or ten minutes earlier and I’d sat watching him blink away the sleep before it slowly dawned on him that he wasn’t under his Lego Star Wars doona in his bed back at home. Sitting up, he got his bearings and then climbed out of his strangely tall bed and went exploring, a groggy commentary on the things he saw culminating in astonishment that our room had an en suite shower and toilet “just like the one in your room, daddy”. And then when, after a knock on the door, his breakfast was delivered to him on a tray – individual portion of rice bubbles, tiny cup of orange juice, a bowl of fruit cocktail and a fancy sealed glass of milk – my seven-year-old boy literally clapped his hands with glee. “What do you say?” I asked him as the lady placed it on the table next to his bed and only the croaky rasp of his heartfelt thank you gave any clue to the drama that had led to him waking up a long way from home. Our adventure had started seven or so hours earlier. An uneventful summer holiday Thursday had come and gone. My wife had been on guard duty as I put in a shift at work and had reported nothing special on my return. Felix had been generally loafing around, Daisy had spent the day at her BFF’s house and Sam had mostly been killing zombies and shouting into his PS4 headset. Oli had just generally been Oli – flitting between his scooter, the new bike he’d got for Christmas and Minecraft. He did, though, have a bit of a sore throat. And at some time between tucking him in and the early hours of the next morning that bit of a sore throat decided to go ballistic. The rasping, seal-like cough – a noise no child should ever make – woke both my wife and I instantly. The tearful, plaintive, panicked cry for help that followed had us both quickly out of bed. The sight of our
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beautiful seven-year-old boy standing in the living room, tears streaming down his cheeks, gasping for breath had us both wide awake. We’d been here before, once, five years previously. It was croup, a virus that attacks the throats of little ones, closing their airways and generally making them very, very unhappy. At least now, then, we were armed with a bit of knowledge, so the blind panic of his attack as a baby was absent. Minutes later, Oli and I were in the car and on our way to hospital. That journey was just awful. Oli sat next to me, eyes wide, concentrating hard on his breathing, obviously scared, confused. I listened for each breath, like I would when he was a newborn in his cot, and the paranoid doubts began to flood in. Should we have called an ambulance? That’s what we did last time and the paramedics began treating him in our living room and didn’t stop till they handed him over to doctors the other end. And then guilt whispered in my ear that just a couple of nights ago, my wife and I had sat out in the backyard enjoying a sultry summer evening and one bottle of wine had turned into two. What if this had happened then? What help could drunk dad be to his son in a time of need? I still don’t know the answer to that one. But then we were there, the emergency room at half one in the morning. Why exactly I’d expected it to be empty I don’t know, but it certainly wasn’t. The usual cast of desperate and needy sat blankly in the plastic chairs and we joined them and waited to be seen. It may be that the triage nurse’s initial bored but professional approach was a reflection of the number of malingerers she suffers each day, but one listen to my boy’s labored breathing was enough to spark her into action. I think the words she repeated twice into the microphone beside her were “code two, purple team to resuss” but I might be wrong. Whatever they were, though, they chilled
me – but also reassured me. The might of modern medicine was on the move. What followed was a blur of activity and the arrival of a cast of characters that, for that moment, was intent on only one thing – making my boy better. There was the junior doctor, floppy haired, trying to hide any hesitancy as he looked to his senior MD for help and guidance. There were the two nurses, the matriarchal Indian all calm authority, the pretty, pregnant redhead, friendly, reassuring and valiantly hiding the weariness of what was obviously a long night. We even merited a visit from the amiable, rotund senior specialist who peered over his glasses at Oli’s notes and announced that everyone was doing splendidly. With their help – and whatever it was that they put in the nebuliser – Oli slowly turned back into my little boy, the croup eventually vanquished by the collective good of paediatric medicine. Hours passed as the team monitored my boy and then, around four in the morning, they moved us to the room we woke up in. By the time my wife relieved me at just before eight, it was all already like a strange dream, a bad dream, yes, but one with a happy ending. I know, of course, that not every parent who brings their child to hospital gets to drive home the next day with a smile on their face, but that was me this time. And I’m not going to thank my lucky stars for that. I’m going to thank that team of brilliant people who came to Oli’s aid when he most needed it, that bunch of individuals from all over, all backgrounds, who have dedicated their lives to learning how to help others and then putting those skills into practice. Their lives are such that they might not remember the disheveled dad and his wideeyed little boy who turned up in the dead of night asking for help – they will have gone to the aid of countless more by the time you read this – but you can rest assured that this family will always be so very, very grateful. PL primolife.com.au