Friday 30 June 2006

Coming Up For Air

My soon-to-be-four-years old daughter suffers from severe asthma that can be triggered by something as simple as a cold, which has resulted in so many casualty ward visits that we have literally lost count-- though we will always have the gigantic medical bills to remind us. Sometimes it's been literally a lifesaver when we went in, and sometimes it was a better-to-be-on-the-safe-side trip, but when the kid is too small to use an asthma whistle to check lung capacity and you can't check her blood oxygen levels, what can you do? More than once we've gone in at 2 AM and sat for hours waiting to be discharged saying to each other, "You know, if we had one of these oxygen monitors we wouldn't have had to come in this time."

That's why this little gadget that measures blood oxygenation from SPO Medical caught our attention. Granted, this is no substitute for trained medical personnel, but like having a stethoscope, epipen or a bottle of oxygen at home, it can give be one more item of reassurance.

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