Why families need two cars

I worked for a few years after college, then retired to have a baby.

Therefore, we gave one of our cars to my newly graduated sister. I did a lot of walking to the (over a mile away) grocery store with her in a baby carriage, using the carriage to get bags of groceries home. 

But when she was one-year-old and got sick, I had to wait until my husband got home (at 9:30 in the evening) before we could take her to the hospital. (had called the Doctor and he order us to the hospital - she had croup and had gotten worse while I waited for my husband to get home) Believe you me - we got a second car after that, so that I could handle emergencies, and eventually went back to work part time. 

Our doctor happened to be the head of pediatrics at the hospital, so we got immediate care. They were going to cut her throat open (a tracheotomy) so she could breathe, but our doctor held them back from doing that and tried other remedies first, which did work. 

Oh the tales I have about that hospital stay. I brought board books for her to look at in her oxygen tent thinking they would be sturdier in that damp environment, but -- she kept thinking the pages were just stuck together, so she kept trying to tear them apart. (All our books at home were regular picture books, not board books.) 

I told the nurses to NOT let her see how her IV tube was attached when they changed the tubing but of course they didn't listen (all children are dumb, don't cha know), so she immediately unattached the tubing and was gleefully spray painting the plastic sheeting of her oxygen tent with the liquid spurting out from the tubing.  🙂 They attached it more securely after that. 

They warned me, but I was still shocked that, when we brought her home after a week's stay at the hospital, she didn't want to associate with us at all.  She was mad at us for abandoning her at that strange place.  (news note, we were there with her most of the time)