The Croup

The first time Eliot rode his bike without training wheels, he got to pick out a new toy, and he chose Buzz Lightyear from the movie Toy Story. Buzz is a robust guy who wears a space suit and says, “To Infinity and Beyond!” Once he acquired Buzz, and his cowboy sheriff friend Woody, Eliot abandoned his other toys. Like the boy in the movie, he took Woody and Buzz with him everywhere. He was fascinated by the lasers Buzz could shoot from his belt, and by the fact that, if the shield were lifted on Buzz’s space helmet, he would run out of oxygen.

Not long into the school year, Eliot caught a cold, and I kept him home for a few days. Saturday morning when I was getting ready to go surfing, I heard him cough. I didn’t think much about it, except that it sounded as if his cold were getting worse. Later in the morning Carly heard Eliot coughing and went in to check on him. That was when she called Blue and they took Eliot to Urgent Care. I have saved the details of that event for Carly’s version of the story below.

The doctor at Urgent Care recognized Eliot’s cough as a symptom of the Croup. She gave Eliot a shot of steroids to open the windpipe, and strapped a mask on his face to get him the oxygen he needed. Once the windpipe opened, Eliot, who had been fighting for his breath, fell asleep in exhaustion, and they kept him there resting.

By the time I arrived, Eliot was fully awake and revved up from the steroids. We took him home, fed him, and put him in front of a movie to calm him down. Then we launched into the day’s chores. Blue went to work for a couple of hours, and I started on some work in the garden. Blue came home, loaded the truck with debris from the yard, and took Carly, and Eliot, who was still revved up, for a dump run. I took a shower and made a cake for my sister Shelley’s birthday. The notes, which Blue had taken at the doctor’s and which we were to discuss, sat on the kitchen counter.

That night we sent Carly out for a bite to eat with the sitter, and took Eliot with us to my parents’ house at the beach, where we put him to bed and had a birthday dinner with Shelley. We opened the window to let in the cold night air (the best thing for keeping the windpipe open) and checked on him several times. There was never another incident with his breathing.

Monday morning I took Eliot to the doctor as per Blue’s written instructions. As I sat with him waiting for Dr. Griger, I realized Blue and I had never interfaced about the two hours he and Carly spent in Urgent Care with Eliot. Worse than not being able to properly answer Dr. Griger’s questions, I had brushed aside what had been for Carly, Blue, and Eliot a traumatic event.

Fortunately Cindy, Dr. Griger’s assistant, whisked in with Eliot’s file and a copy of the doctor’s notes from Saturday. Dr. Griger and I talked at length, she checked Eliot and said his lungs were clear, and we left the office. I called Blue from the parking lot.

“I’m sorry,” I said. What shocked me most was how easy it was to get caught up in the everyday chaos and lose sight of what was important. It was possible that the next time something like this happened I would miss the signs again. It made me feel heavy and sad.

All in all Eliot missed a week of school, and every day he watched Toy Story II. In that movie there is a scene where Woody lifts the shield on the space helmet of “the wrong Buzz Lightyear,” and Buzz is groping for breath. Now Eliot could identify with his hero.



Below is Carly’s version, which she wrote for an autobiographical assignment in sixth grade. We still talk about the time Carly saved Eliot’s life. I have added her story just as she wrote it.



Cough, cough, cough….I could hear my brother coughing. I got out of bed and went to check on him. His face was purple the color of my pajamas. He was coughing a lot. He said his throat was hurting, but I couldn’t really understand him because his cough made him not be able to breathe or talk. “Dad,” I called from downstairs, “Eliot is coughing and he can’t breathe.” But my dad just said he was fine. I ran upstairs and told him that I was serious. My dad had just gotten out of bed, but he ran downstairs. The next thing I knew my dad said, “Get dressed, we’re going to Urgent Care.”

On our way to the doctor Eliot was in tears, and my dad and I were very nervous at the same time. My mom had no clue what was going on because she was out surfing and having a great time.

When we got to the doctor they put us in immediately. The doctor said that my brother was going to be fine. We were in relief, but I was still scared. The doctor was putting some air in my brother. It was just a tube with what looked like steam coming out of it. They put it near my brother’s mouth. My brother threw up a few times. The only good part about this day was that I got to have pop tarts and chips from the vending machine.

When I walked back into the room, my brother was sound asleep. Thirty minutes later he woke up. He was fine! He had a little cough but that’s all.

This experience made me and my dad very worried, and for my brother it was really painful. I learned that I love and care about my brother a lot and I hope it never happens again.

Riding with Eliot

The greatest thing Blue and I did for our six-year old son wasn’t the special education classes, the occupational or speech therapy. It wasn’t the wheat and dairy free diet or the gum stimulating exercises. It was the Trailbike we bought that attached to the back of mine so Eliot and I could pedal the streets together.

There was the private occupational therapy where Eliot could not attend, or chose not to follow directions, until Miranda adopted an approach whereby she followed Eliot’s lead. She developed sequences where fine motor activities like cutting with scissors, which he disliked because they were difficult, were sandwiched between the gross motor activtites like slide and trampoline, which he loved. She said he couldn’t jump until he learned to unlock his knees. It took having a child like Eliot for me to see that bending the knees was an intrinsic part of jumping and landing.

There were exercises like crawling through tunnels, and rolling Eliot into a blanket until he was wrapped tightly like a burrito, which Miranda used to ground and center Eliot. There was the occupational and speech therapy at school. Cheryl’s exercises, coaxing Eliot’s tongue to places in the mouth his did not naturally go, were one of the reasons for his remarkable progress in speech.

But perhaps our single greatest triumph as parents of a child with motor delays was the trailbike we bought when he was six. We were inspired by Blue’s brother Tom and his wife Connie who are road-bike warriors. Every morning at 5:30 Tommy rides his bike to work in Harvey West Park. He rides on winter mornings when it's dark and the temperatures fall below freezing. For downpours, he and Connie wear raincoats and yellow rain pants on their bikes. After dark they turn on mega battery-powered lights. Connie rides regularly from Santa Cruz to Capitola on errands.

When their daughters Margaret and Abbey were little, Tom and Connie towed them behind the bicycle, two bobbing helmets in a trailer. After Margaret and Abbey (who have since graduated from college) grew out of the trailer, I acquired it. It held Carly and Eliot, then until he got too heavy, just Eliot.

Although I drove to Capitola, and when it rained I took the car, we used bikes as much as we could to get around town. It beat getting in the car and sitting in what had become intolerable traffic. But one day I decided I had towed Eliot up my last hill. His weight pulling the trailer back downhill as I pedaled up had become unbearable. I went to the Bicycle Trip and bought a bike that attached to the back of mine. It had a rear wheel, seat, and handlebars, and when Eliot pedaled it turned the back wheel.

In preschool, Eliot pushed his bike with his feet on the ground. This combatted his gravitational insecurity and allowed him to go fast. By kindergarten he was pushing the pedals 180 degrees clockwise, then half a turn counter-clockwise. The Trail Bike helped Eliot balance and master the art of pedaling. Best of all, when he was on the Trail Bike, he helped me up the hills.

Only once the Trailbike failed us. Or rather I failed the Trailbike. I had ridden many times to Potbelly Beach from our house, with and without the kids, when Eliot and I set off one recent Sunday afternoon. We made it to within a couple of miles when we had a flat tire. I had a cell phone but knew Blue and my parents didn't have their cell phones on. The walls of the tire were shredded which is what caused the flat. A bicycle pump might have gotten us to Potbelly Beach, but I wasn’t carrying one, and we were far from a gas station. So we got off the bike and walked.

We walked west on the railroad tracks from Capitola Village to the next beach. Halfway there, Eliot, who was wearing shoes but no socks, had a blister on his heel. I took off my sock and put it on him. He limped down the railroad tracks. Another quarter mile and Eliot had a blister on the other heel. I took off the other sock and put it on him. Then he climbed onto the bike and I walked him. But the railroad tracks were bumpy, and after a few bounces his eyes got wide. “Woah,” he said, and climbed off the bike, deciding he preferred the pain of blisters.

Approaching the campground above New Brighton Beach, we found a steep path dropping down to the road. Craving smooth pavement, we took the path. There was a six-inch opening between masses of poison oak. I carried Eliot down first, then the bike. It occurred to me that in my younger days I would have gone crashing through the brush in order to get it over with. At forty-six I maneuvered down slowly, trying to maintain control of the bike on a steep and slippery incline. It’s amazing I didn’t end up in the brush anyway. Approaching middle age we may be holding down the brakes with our hands, but we still don’t have much control.

Once we were on the smooth pavement, Eliot climbed on the bike again and I pulled. When we reached the campground, we left the bike with the host and headed for the beach trail. I hadn’t been on this trail since I was a kid exploring the woods above Potbelly Beach. An Indian family was walking up, a mom in a sari holding a beach umbrella, a little boy running behind her, then his dad holding a plastic shovel and bucket.

The trail dropped down into the cove where the sun sparkled on a blue-green ocean, and waves from a south swell fanned their white water across the sand. We headed for the shore, where we took off our shoes and waded to wash away the poison oak. Growing up exploring the woods above the beach, we had always plunged in the ocean first thing upon our return, letting the salt water wash the poison oak oil from our skin.

We walked along the shore to Potbelly Beach, where Blue and Carly were relieved to see us. Of course they had worried. A ride that normally took an hour had taken two and a half. But Eliot had never complained, not about blisters or poison oak or the male anatomy on bumpy tracks.

The next day on our way to school, we saw the AIDS Ride cyclists leaving Santa Cruz. Every year in June they ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles to raise awareness and funds for AIDS research. I explained to Eliot who the bicyclists were and why we were waving. He wanted to join. I knew from our hikes and walks, and from our misadventure the day before, that some day he would do it. He would hike or cycle five or six hundred miles in the name of a cause, and he would never complain.

So it was that a misadventure on the Trailbike with my son allowed me a glimpse of his future.