Great School Nurse

The Offspring's asthma means that he has to go to school sick on a regular basis, because every minor cold triggers the symptoms: difficulty breathing.

The alternative, keeping him home every time his asthma is acting up, would mean he'd be out of school for weeks every winter. Nope. Basically, unless he's throwing up or running a fever, he goes to school.

It's a scary thing. He'll wake up in the night coughing, wheezing, gasping for breath, we give him some medication to open up his airways, and then we send him off to school in the morning. He's never had an attack during the day that was bad enough to take him to the ER (nighttime is a different story), but still.

This year, he has a school nurse who reads email messages first thing in the morning, writes back to let us know that she'll be looking out for him, calls us up just to let us know he's okay, and even tells us how much she likes him.

It's one of those things: you don't realize how tense you've been until it's gone. For years, we've been sending The Offspring to school worried he'll have an asthma attack and no one will notice, or if they do notice, they won't know what to do. Now, suddenly, the tension is gone. He's gonna be okay.

His school nurse is going to make sure of it.