"Are We Lucky or Unlucky?"

This is the simple question John asked me today as we rolled into the gas station (yes, rolled, I'll explain later). On the whole, we are incredibly lucky - we have an amazing kid, a great marriage, wonderful families and friends, and happiness in our lives in general, but sometimes, I'll tell you what, it seems like the cards are against us. I hesitate to write this because I have a dear, dear friend who has a daughter who has been bravely battling an illness for over eleven months now, she and her family are the epitome of strength and my little hiccups along the way are nothing compared to her days, but I'll still share the antics that flow out of Casa Lemley.
So, on to Part III:
Maximo woke up today still breathing funny, but better and he took a nice nap this morning, so we felt calmer about the situation. While he was napping, I spoke with Dr. Z and he said that we could bring him to his office so we could talk face to face and so he could check him out again. After Max woke up and was still breathing funny, we decided to take him in. Amazingly, Dr. Z even saw us on a Sunday, and only charged us $30 more than a regular doctor's appointment. (Oh, I love the health care here - okay maybe not so much the ER last night, but it wasn't terrible.)
We were about 5 minutes from our house and another 15 from the clinic, when putt...putt...putt... click. We're so worried about Maximo that we forget to think about normal daily things like the gas gauge and we ran out of d*mn gas! Thankfully, we were only 2 blocks from the nearest station, so five minutes later, we were back on the road, headed to the doctor's office. (Note: we went straight to the doctor's office on the $3.00 of gas from the small container we filled, rather than going directly to a station - we didn't want to be late to the Dr.'s office on a Sunday, maybe not the smartest plan.) After talking with us and watching Maximo breathe, he suggested we get a chest x-ray and a viral swab to rule out anything major. Dr. Z said he wasn't super concerned because Maximo's breathing was normal while sleeping and wasn't consistently labored. Dr. Z called ahead and arranged our tests and we went across the street to Clinica Montesur (the place where Maximo was born and now gives me the heebee - jeebies everytime I even drive by the place - I got choked up looking out the laboratory window to the parking lot that I parked every day to see Maximo). We went and had the xray and then went to the lab to have Max's nose and throat swabbed. He didn't love it, but he was a trooper. The doctor on staff at the NICU read the xray then called Dr. Z and said that everything looked fine - that there were no obstructions and everything looked great. I was really thinking that it was going to look like this:But it didn't, it looked perfectly normal and healthy with no trace of the millions of things he puts into his mouth daily.
So, we left for home. Maximo's fever was back in full force at this time and I didn't have any fever reducer with me, so we just rolled the windows down - it was about 75 degrees today and let the cool breeze cool him off. He fell asleep, which was good, because he was definitely uncomfortable and his little cheeks were beet red. At this point, we get redirected because of a road closing into a neighborhood we're not familiar with, realizing we're now driving on about 30 cents worth of gas. A few minutes later, we finally see a gas station. It's totally full, so we have to wait. We pull behind another car, putt...putt...putt... click. We ran out of gas, AGAIN!
Yes, we realize this is our fault, but really, how much can we handle in one day on five hours of sleep? This is when John turned to me and asked me, "Are we lucky or unlucky?" I just had to laugh...