You know how some weeks make you want to crawl into bed and never come back out? Yeah. That was our last week or so. But we kept trucking forward. Onward ever, as a friend would say. Lets see, where to start… probably the beginning since it was the first domino to fall.

We were super excited to be a part of the Vintage in Verdi event. This is a great event started by a friend of ours where you can go do some of the best Christmas shopping for unique gifts. As you already know, it rained. And rained more. And rained more. Wyatt ended up with a cold. It started as a runny nose. Domino one.

We left the next day for Colorado to go see my parents. Half way to Amarillo Wyatt started to cough. And cough. And cough some more. Yep this was a cold. Not too big a deal right? Well, not when your child has asthma and like a moron you realize both of you forgot the nebulizer machine. Domino two.

We stopped for the night at the Hotel Eklund in Clayton, New Mexico. By this time, Wyatt had a pretty good cough going. No fever though. Still in a good mood. Thankful for those small blessings. We didn’t have the best night. He cried a lot because he was having a hard time breathing though his congested nose. We did get him some medicine but it didn’t seem to do much. Finally he got a little sleep right before it was time to wake up and keep driving. Domino three.

We made it to Colorado, the weather and drive were both just fine. We stopped to get a different medicine for Wyatt. Wyatt was beyond excited to see his Papaw and Maymay! So that eased the cold pain for a while. He seemed like he was doing ok. That first night at my parents he had a hard time breathing. We tried giving him an inhaler. It only helped a little. We were doing all the natural things you know to do to help ease the congestion. We made it through the night. He woke up that next morning in fairly good mood, but we could tell he was going to need a breathing treatment. So we took him down the mountain to Westcliffe to go to the doctor. Once we arrived things were of course worse than we thought. Isn’t that always the case? We were told to head to the emergency room, closest was an hour and a half away. Domino four.

An hour and half later we arrived at an ER in Pueblo. We had a short wait and then the screaming started. The drive down to a lower altitude and the crazy screams Wyatt was giving the nurses shot his Oxygen level up to the lowest acceptable number. We went into a room to wait for a breathing treatment where Wyatt was anxious and asking to leave. Here is where we can laugh (now) about this. Here is the scene:

I am holding Wyatt as tight as I can while the nurse is waving the nebulizer in front of his nose and mouth. Wyatt is screaming. SCREAMING. HIS. HEAD. OFF. Like we are removing his arms without anesthesia. All this time though he still holding an Oreo from like 4 hours ago! Finally toward the end of the treatment he lets out one more huge body check and blood curdling scream that sends my head and his into the rail of the hospital bed. He throws the cookie out the door of the room down the ER hallway. He wiggles out of my grasp. He heads toward the cookie. The cookie gets picked up. Wyatt’s eyes get huge and he screams “My COOOOOOOKKKIEEEE!!!” In a scary way. I say, “Wyatt, this is not my sweet boy! Can I talk to Wyatt?” Without missing a beat he screams “NOOO!!”  And scene.

When we finally left. He was a differnt child. Happy to not be at the ER anymore. And he had a lot to talk about, since he was saving his breath all day. He talked non-stop all the way home. Wyatt was back.

The next day, Rodney and I had a meeting in Westcliffe and after that we headed back home. Westcliffe is at around 7,000 ft. My parents house is around 8,000, maybe closer to 9. This is important information for the next domino.

It was 4 p.m. and we decided we needed to go cut down the Christmas tree if we were ever going to do that. Dad had already picked it out. Rodney and I put on our coats and followed my dad outside. We were not sure how far we were going, but now we know, Rodney needed a bigger coat. We hiked straight up the mountain directly behind my parents house. The temperature was dropping as we hiked straight up and it started to snow, very lightly. It was 0 degrees. We found the tree. Rodney was very quite. I thought he was mad. We cut the tree down and started back down the mountain. It was so cold, I was only able to take like one or two pictures before the iPhone stopped working.

When we got to the house, Rodney was shaking and looked terrible. He was white… as snow. Seriously. He started tearing off his jacket, his shirt. He was down to his under shirt and he started to pass out. It was bizarre. Terrifying. I had no idea what was going on. I just kept holding his head up and talking to him. He was looking at all of us really weird. While it seemed like eternity, by this time it wasn’t even 5 p.m. yet. No more than 10 mintues passed and we got Rodney up and into the truck to drive him further down the mountain. As we drove he got better and better and he told me how for a while he had no idea who any of us where. He didn’t know where he was. He thought we were going to kill him. Can you imagine this??!! It was very scary for both of us. He is still foggy from this episode which can only be something like a High Altitiute Cerebral Edema. He said he felt a pop in his head and saw orange lights. Now, I know what you are thinking. Why didn’t you get him to the ER? Several reasons. This is where all the dominos fall. Just a big ole mess.

Talk about stress? There was some stress to be had. I had enough for all of you for the year of 2017 in the last week. Not to mention how Rodney felt.

The next few days are ok days. We got to see some good friends. We made it home in one piece. Wyatt got to celebrate his birthday twice! Once with my parents and once with Rodney’s family. Wyatt is finally doing better. He is breathing well. Rodney made it though the CD release party without forgetting anything. Which, honestly, we were fearful of him forgetting his songs.

We have never been more thankful for the sun to come up on another day. Especially today, Wyatt’s 3rd birthday. We are in New Braunfels. Breathing. Fishing. Doing nothing.

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