For Mother's Day, I decided to take my almost-five-year-old to a horse show. I am not really one who necessarily needs to be 'pampered' on Mother's Day... I'd just like to do something that makes me happy, and going to a horse show makes me happy. So I drove us an hour south to the show (perfect timing, my son had a nap for the drive) and found many people I hadn't seen in over a year.

And within 20 minutes of arriving, my son was having a lovely asthma attack. I should have known better, our whole family has been been fighting one big nasty Cold (yes, capital C) for about two weeks.

What does that mean? It means that he's predisposed to having an asthma attack when an allergen irritates already inflammed bronchial-something-or-others. (Quick, polling closes soon! Get your votes in for me for Mother of the Yearrrrr!)

In my mind I was thinking about the 20 months or so that it's been since he had an asthma attack. So long, in fact, that all the medication we had for him has expired. His allergens are horses (if he touches them and then his face) and dust and shavings/sawdust (if he inhales them). We used to live on a nice little farm-type place, but had to move in fall 2004 because of these allergies.

But... but... but... we'd been around horses since then and I thought he was adjusting.

Nope.

(Mother of the Yearrrrr, I tell ya!)

Luckily, there happened to be a doctor right there at the show (what can I say, showing horses is for the rich) and she listened to his chest and wrote us out the two perscriptions we needed, plus an aerochamber to administer the puffers properly. She just grabbed a piece of paper and wrote all the info on it... then the challenge became to find a pharmacy that was open on Mother's Day Sunday. Turns out I had to drive about a half hour north to find the closest 24/7 pharmacy (By the way, the Hemi drives very smooth on the highway at about 160km/h) with a child that was dozing off... something that might have been ok had I not been concerned about his oxygen level.

By the time we got there, he was only slightly wheezing (boy - allergen = less wheezing) and I was back to driving the speed limit.

So, we're all good on the puffers again and my son is totally fine.

Happy Mother's Day!