Happy Valentine's Day

I told my wife before I sat down today that she should not expect a mushy Valentine's Day article. I told her I would save the lovey, dovey stuff for later.

There are not too many days I actually remember from exactly one year ago, but I do for today's date. On, February 14th, 2006 Parker, my wife and I left the hospital in Scarborough after spending two and a half weeks there trying to figure out what was wrong with Parker. It was one year ago today they told us that he just had a bronchiolitis and that it would eventually clear itself up. Knowing what I do today about blood cells, I would never had let them do that. Having close to no lymphocytes in a CBC is not an everyday occurrence and does not occur just because you have "bronchiolitis". Regardless, we did get to take Parker home that day.

As most of you know, we were only home a few days before we had to call 911 because Parker was choking on his milk. It is kind of hard to feed when you are breathing 80 - 110 times every minute. Take a minute and count how many times you normally breath in a minute. When 911 did arrive I had already cleared Parker's airway but we were told we had to take Parker in the ambulance back to the hospital he was discharged from five days earlier. We were seen fairly quickly and we requested that we be allowed to leave so that we may drive our son to Sick Kid's in Toronto that Sunday (19th of February) evening. The doctor obliged and the story goes on from there.

That is what I remember about this date last year. Does it make me feel sad? No. To be honest, I don't really give it much thought. We are where we are today because of the sequence of events that occurred up until now.

We finally made contact with the other ADA deficient child in Canada. She is only a year old and has been diagnosed about five months ago. As always, I am not going to disclose any more information about this family unless I have their consent. I am hoping to hear from them shortly as I think it is valuable for families who have a child with a disease like this to communicate and share their knowledge, resources and experiences about the disease since there are so few of us.

I do wish everyone a very Happy Valentine's Day. My wife and I will be having a nice dinner together after Parker goes to bed. I think she wants butter chicken but she still has time to change her mind.