Julia

Unexceptional

Even before Patrick became a subject for whispered medical consultation I had lobbied to forego the big kid-filled birthday party this year. He was supposed to be at invention camp last week (missed the whole thing, poor pumpkin) so I suggested we have our good friends over for cake and pizza after camp on the actual day and then he could pick a friend to do something Fun (waterpark, amusement park, Science museum, whatever he wanted) that weekend. He decided that he wanted to go ride roller coasters at the mall of America and we realized that doing so on a Monday was infinitely smarter than on a Saturday; so Steve took the day off today and that is what they did.

The cake turned out well - provided you define "well" as "that which made Patrick happy" - largely because I let him do most of it himself. I made the cake and cut off the rubbery edges (Steve looked at me like I was either brilliant or insane - "you can, just, cheat... like that? make it look all even with a knife rather than bake skills?") and I made the buttercream and then I handed Patrick the food coloring. The yellow looked like the yolk of a hard-boiled egg and the purple reminded me of a guest bedroom in our old house and Patrick said that they were both perfect. Then he and I used the decorating bag together and looped and swirled our way through Happy Birthday Patrick. Then we transformed a few accidental blobs into a 7 and an exclamation point. Then we made the 7 into a 7th because I brushed my elbow against the cake right there. Art is change.

Patrick is feeling better and I have that blinky disoriented sense I get when I see a matinée. You know? When you walk out into the sunshine and you have a hard time finding your bearings. In retrospect it is obvious that Patrick was sick for weeks and weeks and weeks. All of these little pieces that I noticed in passing (like the fact that for two months I could never seem to brush his teeth enough to get them clean? that would be because his entire head had become the Tokyo of bacteria) all fit neatly together now to form a picture of The Dawning of a Serious Bacterial Infection. For once, though, I am not beating myself up about the oh! I should have done! We kept bringing him in; they kept checking him. What else can you do?

This is just idle gossip from the lab but in case you feel like playing Infectious Disease Specialist at home when we saw our pediatrician on Friday he gave me some of the numbers that influenced their decision to admit him. Patrick's white blood cell count was 18000, his sed rate was 72 and his c reactive protein (aka CRP to everyone but me since I could not for the life of me remember the letters in order and kept babbling to my brother about CPR; much to his confusion) was a whopping 150. None of these things meant anything to me but the doctor said the CRP was the highest he had ever seen in clinic and that Patrick must have felt like hell no matter how FINE and GREAT he kept insisting he was.

If nothing else I have concluded that Patrick is never to be trusted again when it comes to how he is feeling and for the next two months or so I plan on personally examining his tonsils at every opportunity with a miner's helmet and a crowbar if needed.

Caroline, speaking of our walking wounded, is suffering from some kind of post traumatic stress disorder when it comes to people and her face. I took her to get her bangs trimmed again and this time rather than admire herself and flip through a copy of Glamor she opened her mouth like a gigantic "O"and SCREAMED. Clearly she has yet to forget the stitches. And, before I forget, a few people in the comments (notably Cris. hi Cris!) educated me about young children and sedation. Apparently it can be done orally with a quick wear-off and a pleasant goofiness. Versed, I think it was called.  So, you know, if it helps you and I hope it does.

Edward has eczema on his eyelids and legs and he is cutting two more teeth. Although technically neither ailment falls particularly high on the family's trauma scoreboard for the month of June they are his and he is making the most of them. I cannot for the life of me figure out how to make the eyelids feel better, although cortisone has almost cleared up the stuff on his legs. I trimmed his nails as short as possible to try to help with the King Lear look he is sporting but obviously it is uncomfortable and like Barbara Fritchie, Edward likes to scratch when he is itchy. Any thoughts on the eyelid eczema would be appreciated. We are seeing the pediatrician tomorrow (it's their eighteen month well child check, although the doctor asked me to bring Patrick along too - no appointment needed for him; just to check him over before our vacation) but ya'll always have such clever ideas about such things.

Hey, this has nothing to do with anything but I might as well ask: how much do you pay for your electricity every month, on average? I have been fighting with the electric company for months now but they keep baffling me with their rotating calendar and fluctuating kilowatt pricing and I don't know what else. They claimed our meter was broken so they came out and replaced it in February and the next month billed us $900. NINE hundred dollars for the month, which (considering the fact that we have gas heat and cannot be seen from fucking space) seemed a little outrageous to me. They said that this included underbilling from the previous four months but I went through every electric bill we have had for five years and pointed out that even so it represented a hundred percent increase over the same rough time period from previous years. They said don't be silly. They said that cannot be right. They said well maybe but you know prices have gone up. They said they had something boiling over on the stove and they would have to get back to me later. Steve and I have been virtuous about turning off every light in the house that is not in use. We do not use the central air conditioning. We unplugged the hot tub for the season. And still our last electric bill was over $300. I think we are being robbed at bulb point but I would love to get a global comparison, the better to ginger up my dander for my next call to corporate.

Is that it? Let's see, Patrick better and seven; the starting point for Caroline's metamorphosis into Cousin It noted; Edward itches, damn it; electric company steals from hard-working family because they can... yep, I think that covers it.

[Except: we are going on vacation on Saturday and I am so excited I can hardly wait. Not the 5:30 am departure part; or the traveling with not one but two 18 month olds; or the fact that we can no longer fit into a modest rented compact but need to reserve some sort of circus caravan... but everything else. Very excited.]

PS From today:

   

Between Edward dressing her and Patrick's affection for decorating her with bows, Caroline is going to start to feel like her brothers' own personal Cabbage Patch Kid.

Magnificent Seven

I had to swear on a stack of Captain Underpants books (the library cart stopped outside the hospital room. Patrick took one look at the string of Words We Do Not Say on the cover said, "Well THIS looks interesting") that I would wake Patrick up at midnight and four am and get him to ingest a combined 17.3 ml of clindamycin/cefdanir (the "a" in clinda? it's for ASS) and I would take his temperature every four hours and I would bring him back to the hospital if he was anything less than 115% perfect at any time; but the attending physician agreed to release him last night so he could be home for his birthday.

Yay!

We were especially pleased by this unexpected doctorial pardon because the infectious disease doctor we saw yesterday morning just made a face when given the same request.

"Birthday tomorrow? Hmmm, well, I can guarantee you will be home before July. How does that sound?"

Patrick said, "JULY? Do you know how many DAYS THERE ARE LEFT IN JUNE?" And then he covered his face with his hands and started to cry.

We still do not know what the infection is, exactly, or where it is, precisely. We know a great deal about what and where it is not, however, and we know that his levels are heading in the right direction. If it had not been his birthday today they would have kept him on the IV antibiotics through at least tomorrow but it is and they did not. So Patrick slept at home last night (when I wasn't waking him up per my sacred oath) and he is very very very happy about this.    

Thank you so very very much for all of your good wishes and prayers. They meant a lot to me.

I apologize for not posting an update sooner. When I called his doctor on Monday afternoon and said that Patrick had just started another 103 degree fever they told me to bring him in. I was about 75% certain that they would send us to the ER after they saw him so I took the precaution of packing a backpack to bring with us. I had stuff for Patrick to drink and snacks and some books and a couple Sudoku puzzles and a warmer shirt for him. I also brought my laptop and a novel for myself. So when the ER admitted him to the hospital I patted my back for showing such foresight. Once we got upstairs to his room, though, I realized that I had forgotten a billion important things (toothbrush. pillow for Patrick since the hospital ones were hard and made his head sweat as if he had jumped into a pool. pajamas for me. fifty more Sudoku puzzles. my bedtime chocolate. a thermos full of wine) and I discovered that although the hospital has added wireless internet since Caroline was a patient seventeen months ago they have blocked all of the social networking sites like Typepad and Facebook. I think this is kinda crappy, actually. I understand why employers have done it but why would a hospital care how their patients choose to utilize the internet? That is a sincere question by the way; I really cannot understand why they put these restrictions in place. Not only could I not read any blogs to while away the time as Patrick complained incessantly about his IV site; I could not access a page to post anything to mine. It even blocked your comments from being delivered via email although I received other messages.

Ultimately it didn't matter all that much, though, because I managed to leave my laptop on all night when we got there and the battery died and I forgot to ask Steve to bring the charger when he came bearing supplies and that was the end of my ability to communicate electronically.

One quick story:

Patrick treated the entire situation like an abduction. Every time someone came into the room and asked, "So what brings us here?" Patrick would say, "WELL. I was feeling MUCH BETTER but then she [that would be me, thanks] took me to the clinic and I told them I was feeling MUCH BETTER but they decided to send me to the hospital and now here I am feeling MUCH BETTER except for all the blood draws and the IV."

He decided almost instantly that they would keep him if he was sick so whenever someone asked how he was feeling he would say, "Great! I feel great! Nothing hurts! I have never felt better in my ENTIRE LIFE."

He quickly became famous/notorious with the doctors and nurses for being the most argumentatively healthy sick kid on the floor. Also, I overheard his nurse telling the radiology techs, "Please don't talk down to him; it agitates him." You should have seen Patrick's face the first fifty times someone asked him if he had any "owies" or told him the blood pressure cuff was going to give his arm a hug. Sorry. I actually just laughed aloud as I remembered that. He is such a pain in the ass sometimes.

Yesterday, after he had a CT scan done on his neck, they brought him back up to his room via the main elevator. It was full of people and Patrick and his nurse and his IV were towards the back. As the elevator started to go up Patrick said, firmly, "I want two things: I want to go home and I want someone to take this thing out of my hand."

The doctor standing next to me whispered, "Um, is he taking us all hostage? Are those his demands?"

I looked at the ceiling and tried to pretend I was with the sweet, silent child in the front.

Patrick thought Caroline should have some birthday bows in her hair this morning to celebrate his awesome birthdayness . She patiently humored him.

We are very glad he is home.

PS He has to go back for more blood work tomorrow and I am pretty sure that they are sending him to an ENT in the near future. At last check his tonsils were mildly ok'er but his adenoids were disgusting and I think they will want him to get the structures back there checked after the infection is deemed to be fully under control. I am actually nervous about the testing because he really was on the bubble in terms of being released and if the oral antibiotics are not being as effective as we hope they are... no. It doesn't bear considering. Positive! Thinking!

PPS Sorry this is so mish-mashy. Patrick is still registering as a 10.6 on the Neediness Scale and I have a cake to make and decorate (every time they did something to him that was painful I tried to distract Patrick by asking him things. at one point I asked what his birthday cake should look like. "Bright yellow? Sure. Purple lettering? Absolutely. In a... in a what font style? I mean, YES I can do that!" I have basically committed to the Sistine Chapel of birthday cakes. I didn't have the heart to say, oh, sweetie, Mommy was just making false promises to help you ignore the fact that you had blood dripping down your hand; I don't know how to decorate cakes you silly child.

PPPS Thank you again, seriously, for all the kindness. I am reading through comments and you are making me cry. Cry, I tell you.

Admittedly

Patrick was admitted to Children's last night with a bacterial infection of unknown origin and location.
Good thoughts appreciated.

Lo Que Se Llama Cerveza

How are you feeling, Patrick?

And when your temperature goes above 103 again?

We are on day six seven of Patrick's plague and... everything is mildly awful. I took these pictures of him after we returned from the doctor as it was the first time all week he had been out of pajamas and I wanted to mark the occasion.

Other than the clinic trips, he has fallen into a routine:

5 am - climbs into bed with me complaining about the fact that he is hothothot
5:01 am - falls into a deep sleep after kicking the blankets off both of us and stealing my pillow
9 am - wakes up and wanders into the living room where he stares into space until someone takes his temperature; 103.infinity
9:01 am - downs motrin/tylenol
9:32 am - fever down to 100! never felt better in his life! WHY can't he go outside WHY can't he have a friend over WHAT book should he read no he's read that one and that one; not that one but he doesn't WANT to read it and it is back to the same four episodes of Tom & Jerry that we have on tivo
3:00 pm - stares into space as his temperature hits 103 again
3:01 pm until 5:01 am - feverish and miserable 

On Wednesday our pediatrician stated that every kid who has walked into his office in the past week with sustained high fevers has swine flu so... walks like a duck; quacks like a duck. Swine flu, for heavens sake. I said, ok, but no cough? No sore throat? He listened to Patrick's lungs, which are as clear. Then he looked at Patrick's tonsils and recoiled. What ho? I asked. He showed me Patrick's throat which is a gross pulpy mass of gross gross gross. Gross.

"Your throat doesn't hurt?" we asked, incredulous.

"No," said Patrick.

The doctor took him off the antibiotics, checked his platelets (up significantly but still subnormal) and told me to call him on Friday (uh, today I guess) to check in. Since Patrick still had his morning/evening fever and his lymph nodes have begun to swell like sponges I am bringing him back into the doctor this afternoon.

As I said to my mother, if he doesn't have swine flu yet he'll certainly get it if we keep going back to sickville. Ho ho ho.

As I have absolutely nothing new to report from quarantine I might as well pick up the humiliating story of my early 20s, at least until it's time to go back to the pediatrician (as I left on Wednesday he asked if I had any preferences regarding our wing; I told him the only thing upon which I insist is an ornamental fountain.)

Let's see, where was I? Oh right, Honduras part one.

Random story:

After sweeping me into a passionate embrace and swearing eternal devotion Julian promptly ditched me at his place and went back to his peaceful corp work designing water systems for remote mountain villages. As a human being I commend his dedication. As a taxpayer I applaud his diligence. As a spoiled 22 year old I took stock of my new situation (very occasional electricity; a pipe sticking out of the wall that trickled cold water and acted as a shower; mosquitoes the size of my very wide feet; no Julian around anywhere) and I thought, are you fucking kidding me? What am I supposed to DO all day? Why am I even here? [hint: I shouldn't have been, of course.]

After about three days of staring at the concrete walls and playing with the children next door I decided I needed to get out of the house. So one afternoon I crossed the highway and started off for a bar I had seen a mile or so down the road. The place was deserted when I got there except for the guy behind the counter.

"Una cerveza, por favor," I said carefully. Spanish is not my second language. Or even my third.

"No," he said.

I mentally reviewed my request for errors. Seemed ok to me.

"Cerveza?" I repeated, pointing at a bottle of Salva Vida (a Honduran beer for which I have always maintained a fondness - it had the catchiest damned jingle.... "Salba Bida! da da da DA cerbeza!")

"No!" he said.

"Oh! Are you closed? Um," I frantically tried to remember the word for closed. Unable to come up with one I attempted a hand gesture that might have been anything and then mimed leaving and coming back later. I probably even pointed at where my watch would have been if I have ever worn a watch.

Then a guy walked in. Sat down. Ordered a beer. Was given one.  

What the... I mean, QUE?

So I pointed at the new guy's beer and then pointed at myself and repeated please and beer a few more times before I finally held up a couple of... oh what is Honduran currency called? lempira? no, I think that's a kind of eggroll in the Phillipines, I dunno, anyway... I held up some money and smiled. I assumed this was a linguistic misunderstanding, easily remedied with a round of charades augmented by props.

Whereupon the bar guy started yelling at me - really yelling - getting all finger stabby in the process. The first time I went to Honduras I was terrified that I would be murdered by banditos. What I should have been worried about was being bored out of my mind but nooooo I was in loooove... so my major fear was machete attacks. I had no idea why this person was shouting at me because I wanted a beer but he seemed fairly keen on not giving me one and how was I to know how long it would take for him to go from hollering at me to throwing my body into a ditch somewhere? So I fled. As an aside, I later learned that Honduras is actually a very nice country; friendly people, generally fond of Americans (a man once followed me through a grocery store in San Pedro Sula; nodding, smiling and shouting "Ronald Reagan! Ronald Reagan!" - not a DC native's favorite president but a nice thought nonetheless) and they are not remotely predisposed to hacking innocent travellers to death. Guatemala on the other hand...

+++

Just back from the doctor's office. Patrick's temperature (of course) dropped to a chilly 97.7 the entire time we were there. However, the pediatrician accepted that this was a fever anomaly and looked at Patrick's hideous tonsils and took more blood... the new/old assumption is that whatever else is going on Patrick has an abscess in his tonsil. He is back on clindamycin (OH MY GOD IS THIS STUFF HORRIBLE. DISGUSTING. AWFUL. I cannot believe that Patrick will not eat delicious eggs or buttery mashed potatoes but he will swallow this vile concoction three times a day) and if that fails to eradicate the whatsit then Patrick has bought himself an -ectomy next month. But I am hopeful that the new drugs will do something positive. Soon. It's his birthday next week and he is supposed to go to inventor's camp on Monday... oh and he is driving me crazy being on the couch all the time.

Every day Patrick counts aloud the hours he has spent watching television this past week and then he gives me a limpid stare, knowing that it bugs me.

"Remember, mommy, when you said I couldn't watch TV when school got out because we were not going to spend the summer that way? And now I have watched, um, twelve... thirteen... fourteen and a half hours!"

Oh, shut up and drink your bright blue medicinal Gatorade (Patrick has lost five pounds since Sunday - he officially gets to eat and drink anything he wants.)

[GOOD GRIEF Patrick is lying next to me watching a movie with his feet on my stomach. The soles of his feet felt warm so I took his temperature again and it is up to 104.2. Must go bathe child.]

....

Poor kid.

So I eventually learned that further down the road from me was a place called the Hotel Paradiso, a brothel. In order to discourage the ladies from plying their trade there, the bar from whom I was trying to purchase a beer had instituted a firm no unescorted women policy. So what the nice man was trying to tell me was: we don't serve your kind. After my initial irritation I was charmed by the idea.

"Julia, my god, how tan you are and whatever did you do with that English degree?"

"Well, I had planned on law school but a misunderstanding lead to a surprising and yet lucrative career in freelance Central American prostitution. And you?"

For the record before I left Honduras I started picking up vagrants (male) near the bar and buying them drinks in exchange for acting as my escort so I could just have a beer and read my book in relative comfort. They had a ceiling fan in there, for fucks sake. As you can guess my Spanish had improved by that point while my fear of being cubed had decreased. Besides, it amused me that yet again a policy designed to influence morality produced unintended consequences. 

I need to go check on Patrick again. He's hot like a waffle and the only caution my pediatrician gave me today was that we need to keep an eye out for signs that he's getting worse. IV ho, you know.

Two pictures:

Caroline with her luscious new bottom lip

Edward looking overwhelmingly Edwardesque - he disapproves of so much, I'm afraid, that his own bottom lip must be compressed in concern.