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Croup-y New Year

So we spent New Year's in the emergency room. For a few days before, our 22-month-old, Xander, had what seemed to be a run-of-the-mill cold. Just after the ball dropped on the West Coast, I heard him coughing uncontrollably on the monitor. When I went in to give him some water and maybe a little cold medicine, I found him gasping for air in his crib. A couple minutes later we had five burly paramedics in our living room, their equipment spread out on our floor to crack his chest if necessary.

We knew he was OK when the paramedics started to smile. The lead guy calmed us down and explained that his incessant gasping was in fact most likely a fairly common viral infection called the croup. They sent us to the Seattle Children's Hospital ER, where we spent the better part of two hours waiting to be seen. It seems a lot of kids get lacerations on New Year's and they had jammed up the ER about an hour before we got there. Otherwise, we'd have been in and out of there in about 20 minutes. (It seems every visit we've ever made there takes three hours.)

If you're a new parent, you should know about the croup. Reading about the various types of coughs your child might get in a book or on Babycenter.com won't properly prepare you. You have to imagine that your child isn't coughing at all - but rather choking to death minus the turning blue part. Xan looked like he was literally gasping his last breath. Needless to say, we were FREAKED.

The reality is: He could breathe just fine (an oxygen meter in triage confirmed this for us later). Hot steam and cold air will help bring it under control, at least until the virus runs its course. Suddenly, the past three days made sense. Xan refused his naps and didn't sleep well at night (normally he's a sound sleeper, going 11-13 hours a night). But being in a horizontal position was painful for him and brought on fits of coughing. So would getting upset, leading to a vicious cycle whenever we'd try to lay him down to change his diaper. He also suddenly wanted to play outside in the cold for hours on end (the cold air made him feel better). And he was an increasingly finicky eater (no doubt some foods hurt his already sore throat).

The good news was that the Children's ER was packed with toys, which kept him pretty busy. I was disappointed to see they still only had the same ol' crappy old N64 (with a broken analog stick and three games permanently attached) that they had when we last visited about a year ago. Hopefully the recent Child's Play toy drive will finally equip them with a GameCube and a couple of GBAs. Anyway, Xan picked up the N64 controller and played a little Star Wars Pod Racer, learning he could make the pod driver scream in pain by pressing the A button repeatedly. (Since the stick wasn't working, the pod was jammed up against a wall.)

About 3:30 a.m., Xan got a steroid treatment to help him breathe easier and we all went home and crashed.

--Gamewatcher

p.s. - Xander started vomiting today - looks like he picked up a bug from one of the kids in the ER. A croup-y New Year, indeed.

BLOG: Croup-y New Year - So we spent New Year's in the emergency room.

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EA Sux

I've been quiet on EA's recent behavior although I really meant to write a Rant about the EA widow and the guy who worked his tail off on The Urbz only to be canned for wanting to work smart and not as part of an organized labor camp mentality: long hours for the sake of filling some bean counter's spreadsheet and idea of what a successful project looks like. And maybe I still will.

For now, I'll just admit that I'm really pissed off at what they're doing to the gaming industry, not to mention well-intentioned individuals who care about artistry and good game design only to get chewed up in the gears of a large machine intent only on world domination. Hey, wait a second: That would make a great game!

A bit of history. Electronic Arts was one of the first game studios to make an impression on me. Back in high school, I bought their Pinball Construction Set for my Commodore 64 - and I loved that it came in a thin, square box that defied the conventions of videogame software packaging. (Of course, back then many game floppies just came in clear plastic ziplock bags.) They were viewed as a collective that stood for the artist and they took game design to a new level.

Today, they're just a lean, green money-making machine. And while there's nothing wrong with that to a certain degree, when they start limiting competition to ensure their success you have to wonder if it's really in the best interest of gamers to stand behind them and hand over their credit cards in tacit endorsement of this behavior.

I'll fall short of calling for an all-out boycott. Last night I picked up Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath because I'm a long-time fan of Lorne Lanning's skewed satirical take on an alternate universe. In this case, EA is only the publisher - Lorne's Oddworld Inhabitants did all of the heavy lifting, and they only turned to this Evil But Lucrative Empire after another spurned them.

I'll post my Oddworld impressions, along with those from some other games I've been playing, soon. In the meantime, remember you - the gamer - do have some say in how things play out. .

-=Gamewatcher

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