Mighty Morphin Cough

First Elijah had it.  Then he passed it on to Luca.  I’m not sure who had it before Eli.  But my guess is Satan.  But this cough has been mildly unpleasant. 

It’s the kind of cough that shakes Luca awake at night.  Many, many times.   That wake is always followed by crying.  The kind f crying that’s best soothed by the loving touch of a mom.  Unfortunately for both Luca and me, Diana can never hear it due to her not being able to hear stuff syndrome.

Now, Luca’s favorite TV show, by far, is “Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers.”  It’s a  1990’s kung fu show that Netflix resurrected.  Thanks for nothing, Netflix.  The show is just awful.  It’s essentially re-edited Japanese martial arts footage sliced with some of the worst American acting ever.  The spandex clad teen actors aren’t even cute enough to warrant me creepily watching.

Anyhoo, every night I lay down with Luca to rub his back and tell him he’s okay after he hacks up a fur ball.  Which is all well and good until he falls asleep.  Then he enters Mighty Morphin’ Mode.  Which involves flopping around, flailing his arms and legs into my face.   I have to place my arms in front of my face to prevent him from giving me an instant Jimmy Durante.  But even asleep he can sense when I crawl away, because when I do, he instantly coughs himself awake again and the whole kung fu thing starts again.

The other day, Luca seemed to be okay.  The worst of the coughing seemed to have passed.  But as soon as we put him down for bed, he erupted into an epic coughing fit.  When I checked on him, the whole front of his face was covered in blood.

I quickly wiped the gore from him and told Diana to call the doctor.

It wasn’t our awesome regular doctor on call. It was Dr Vague.  After hearing the symptoms, he said, “Well.  It could be nothing.  Or it could be something terrible and unthinkable.  Bye bye.”

So I decided to monitor him all night because, well, who is going to sleep after a diagnosis like that?  I placed one of our spare kid’s mattresses next to Luca’s bed, just out of Kung Fu reach.

But after an hour of sleeping, I woke up to Luca’s fist in my face, as he had rolled onto my makeshift bed.  He ended up fine.  But I have a split lip.