I was in no hurry.
"But it will be like camping," mom said.

Hours later the RT set it up over my head. I didn't mind it for about 20 minutes while my mom read from a Reader's Digest she found in the waiting room. But when I laid back and tried to watch TV I could barely see it through the plastic. I wanted out.

At dinner time I got my wish. After dinner I refused to go back in.

That night a dark haired RT I had never met before came into the room. She was very affable, and I grew to like her right away. I can't remember what we talked about, but we talked a lot. She was a good RT like Sahara, who played cards with me. No, she was a great RT because she told me it was okay that I stay out of that tent.

"You're going to come in during the night to give me my treatments, right?" I asked, hating that she had to leave.

"I sure will," she said with a smile.

I was up all night. I knew I had treatments every four hours and I couldn't wait for that new RT to come back into my room so we could talk some more. But I never saw her again -- or so I thought.

A week ago -- and 28 years later -- I was talking to my co-worker Jane Sage. She said, "You know what? Recently I was thinking of when I was called in to work nights because we had a little 10-year-old boy in an oxygen tent. And you know, it never even occurred to me--"

"IT WAS YOU! You were THAT RT!" I said.

Her smile grew. "Yes. I think it was me. It never even dawned on me until just now."

I now work with two of my favorite childhood RTs.

Now, as an RT myself, I like to pay attention to my patients, as opposed to charting in the room. I like to think I'd be this way even if I wasn't the recipient of good care when I was a kid asthmatic.