Just In Time

And I have yet another opportunity to thank a guardian angel. This time, again at the beach, my twenty-year-old daughter developed a skin rash. At first, this seemed like a normal allergic reaction to something akin to poison ivy. Something that could be easily remedied by calamine lotion and time and lots of water. Whenever anyone around me is ill, I feel obligated to counsel them to take a bath and drink lots of water. I mean, you want to make sure you’re clean just in case you do have to go to the doctor’s office, and a little water never hurt anyone, right?Anyway, the next morning my daughter woke me up. Not only is the rash worse, but she felt like something was really wrong. We rushed to the Outer Banks medical clinic and, being a Monday, of course it was packed. We signed in, and as we were sitting there we could literally watch Julia’s skin break out in more and more and more hives. Not being medically astute as to the dangers of a quickly spreading rash, we were actually taking wagers on what part of her body would be covered first.After an hour of this phenomenon and when my daughter was almost completely covered in spots, she went to the desk to say that perhaps she needed immediate care. It happened to be at a time when lots of people were making the same query at the desk, so she was given the standard “we are helping everyone as soon as we can, please take your seat.”She did, and half an hour later, she was finally called in to the examining room. I knew that when the nurse came back out to the waiting room to tell me I might want to join my daughter that the news was not good. Later on, I viewed this request as extraordinarily good as well as timely.  At about the exact time my daughter was asked by the doctor to open her mouth, her throat began to swell. Immediate action was taken, and although we had a tense minute or two when my daughter still felt her throat closing, we survived just fine. I still have an alternate picture in the back of my mind. This is one of what could have happened. Only five minutes more of waiting in the lobby could have found Julia collapsing on the waiting room floor, unable to breathe with people trying to revive her but hampered by not knowing of the rapidly blocking airway. I call this “just in time” angel action.Note: Julia had one more allergic attack when we were at home and on familiar territory. She did have to be rushed to the hospital in an ambulance. We never did find the cause of the allergy, but she carries her EpiPen and trusts that someone is watching over her every day.