Armed with a Whisper

Having our four grandkids spend the weekend is all fun and games until someone needs a paramedic at midnight. That someone was Paige, a huggable little first-grader only two weeks past her sixth birthday.

Following a fun time at the park, Paige had gone to sleep amongst her siblings. All were happy, healthy and squeaky clean from their baths. At around eleven-thirty, on that Saturday night last September, she then rocked everyone awake with a croupy cough that seemed to trigger an asthma attack in her. Paige quickly became stressed and had trouble breathing. After my wife administered Paige’s rescue inhaler and her airway didn’t clear, it was time to dial 911.

That night took me back more than thirty years, to an incident involving Paige’s mom, Tamara, our firstborn.