sickness by brokestick

Big Brother R. always says "When H. is sick it's sickness by brokestick and when he gets better, it's sickness by fix-stick". This past week, it was time for the brokestick. Little H. caught something, and he had it bad. His mucus isn't like a normal person's, you know, when WE are sick, we cough and sputter and use Kleenex to get the junk out. H. isn't so lucky. We have to beat the junk out of him. Force medicines into him that he gags and chokes on (and hurls across the room - we had a nice array of splash-paint colors one night - flashback to the '80's). THen one day over the weekend, he stopped eating. Would not take a single sip or nip of anything. I weighed him on our scale about every hour, hoping that all the work we did to get him to the 50th percentile would hold.
But alas, he did lose some pounds. HE was choking and coughing, and I freaked, My mind kept replaying his stay in the PICU almost one year ago.
Would it be that he ends up there on this his near anniversary?
Then morning came, and suddenly, the boy was begging for a bottle. He chugged and guzzled, guzzled and chugged. He is still chugging away today on White grape juice and special high-calorie milk.
Whew, that was close. He still has a bit of a cough leftover, but nothing like it was a few days ago. I so want him to make it through the one-year mark with no more hospital stays!
Here's to you, mah little fahter, you done goooooood.