We're going to Chicago?

Okay, quick post today as I’m feeling a little frantic and overwhelmed because we’re leaving for Chicago tomorrow, and I am WAY under prepared.

Somehow this trip just snuck up on me. Okay, it isn’t a “somehow”. I have been dreading this trip so I simply put it from my mind, is the more accurate explanation. I’m going to Chicago for a 5-day conference for work. Five days! Five days! I don’t think I could be interested in workshops about food, money, and sex for five days – and none of these topics will be covered at the conference.

Anyway, SRH and Zane are planning to accompany me, and they’ll take in all the sights of the city while I’m sitting in workshops. As I’m sure I’ve alluded to in past posts, making a trip with a kid who has life-threatening food allergies and severe asthma is not an easy task. In fact, we just tend to avoid taking trips, but this particular one could not be avoided.

I have been so busy planning “worst case scenario” lists for food and medicines that I happened to miss that we’re almost out of two of Zane’s maintenance medications. Good grief! There is no way to get them in time, so we’ll be skipping a few doses on the trip. Not many, but a few.

I’d like to say, in my defense, that I have been fighting off a bug since the end of the week, and it’s winning. I am full-on sick today, so my thinking hasn’t been quite so clear. (See here for SRH’s Licensed to Ill account of his battle with the bug).

Adding to the madness, Zane woke up coughing from his nap today – an ominous asthma sign in our house, and I’m now forced to consider the following two abysmal options:

1. Go ahead with our plan of taking Z to Chicago – we’ve located the Children’s Hospital there and have plenty of “rescue” medications – and hope that things don’t progress.
2. Leave SRH and Z home while I go to Chicago – with the idea that I wouldn’t stay for the whole five days.

As you might imagine, both of these options sound pretty crappy to me, but I’m trying to just wait and see whether Zane’s asthma symptoms look like they are going to escalate. We’re keeping our fingers crossed.

I am so in for Mother of the Year.