A Great Sadness: RIP, area child

I hate to type this, but if I don't write it out there ain't nothin' else. A seven-year-old boy from the area died of the flu this past Sunday. He apparently had a history of asthma.

I've never had even a taste of the pain his parents must be going through, but the fear wells up as I type, listening to my own asthmatic son coughing in his bed down the hall. We've taken every precaution and that's all the comfort I can muster.

RIP, young man. And may your parents be well.


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Highlands Anxieties

The Dyson Foundation just sponsored a Marist College survey of Hudson Valley residents to determine, essentially, what's keeping us awake at night.

Here's the list: Many Voices, One Valley

Our top priority, I am advised on the day the second bill for the lad's asthma hospitalization arrives, is making health care more affordable. I'll give 'em that.

I've got plenty to say about this study and its implications, and little brainpower to compose it. The connection I want to make most, though, is the one between air quality (not a concern that made the list, although Orange County has some of the region's crappiest, thanks) and health care costs (specifically, for us, asthma--and Orange County's asthma death rate ranks among the highest in the state). Preserving open space, minimizing sprawl, and improving public transportation all ranked well down the list, but improving those areas would filter upward to affect health care--it might remain expensive, but we might need less of it. And now that I think of it, wouldn't people prefer fewer auto accidents and their attendant health care costs? Better public transportation would probably help there, too.

Some good news related to the above and not much touted in the regional press was this major air pollution settlement. It's a start.

Goose poop didn't rate high enough to make the top ten, but you wouldn't know it. People talk about it around here ALL THE TIME.


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They X-Rayed His Puppy, at Least

The other morning when we got to the doctor to have our son examined for a particularly bad case of bronchitis that he had developed following a cold, they gave him a shot of epinephren and called an ambulance, which took him to the hospital for the next three days.

Parents! Do yourselves a favor and read the following two links!

How to Recognize an Asthma Attack
Asthma Basics

He's doing fine now; in fact, dosed four times daily with steroids and albuterol, he's ramped up a little more than usual and helped me dig a shallow twenty-foot drainage ditch in the yard today. We have been serving up our self-castigation with a rich, blamery sauce. But some dark nights of the soul and the support of a lot of people (both with and without asthma, with and without kids) have talked us down from our guilt. And he forgave us as soon as we let him ride in an ambulance.

Now the baby has a fever. At least she waited.

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