Oak, I read your post in full and chose not to give a serious reply because I disagree with what you did all those years ago. I have a child who was on an inhaler for 13 years and would not have wanted you to treat him based on symptoms that at the time you did not know with 100% certainty were asthma.
My reply was in reference to what we say in our neck of the woods —-JOKINGLY— when someone is acting even a tiny bit like a martyr. It is a Christian reference: get down off the cross— implying someone is on a cross waiting to be crucified like Jesus— because somebody else needs the wood (the cross is made of) for some practical, not self-aggrandizing, purpose. I’m surprised you haven’t heard it, but maybe it’s just a Southern thing. To be clear, it is a joke. Such things are usually said to people fondly but with the message that no one thinks the person complaining has actually been wronged.
Q