29 posts tagged “family”

Maybe it's because I love the lecture I give on basic plot structure, my unoriginal yet endearingly dorky metaphor of Protagonist Bill climbing Plot Mountain.  "In the end, there's always resolution," I tell my students. "It may not always be a happy ending, but at least it will feel like an ending." 

So Thursday, the audiologist confirmed that Josh's hearing appears to be stable.  No change in his hearing ear at all.  We don't even need to go back until June, 2009.  This was supposed to be my close the book, last chapter moment.  We never had an explanation for Josh's hearing loss and strange, episodic symptoms.  But at least since his tonsillectomy the symptoms were gone and throughout the difficult year, he had no further hearing loss.

So then, Friday, we wake up to an episode (that had been coming on for several days, but that I denied in the classic psychological sense of the term).  He had been developing the transient red rash, flushing his cheeks and inner arms, his low grade fever, mysterious body aches (this time his right elbow joint), and another strep infection confirmed both by a clinical exam and a culture. 

Everyday living doesn't lend itself to resolution, happy or sad or otherwise.  Probably that's why I need stories so much. (And for sure why I vented so melodramatically in an email to Josh's ENT, geneticist, and rheumatologist. That had nothing at all to do with my character flaws.)

Oh, yeah, and Sophie and I have strep infections again too!  GDMF.

You know you're Minnesotan if you feel compelled to say out loud "at least no one died,"  but secretly you think if someone had died, at least people would bring casseroles and there would be some possibility of cathartic emotion.  Instead, there is the relentless drip...drip...drip of ordinary catastrophes. Josh gets his tonsils out, then he gets the flu, then mom gets the flu, then Sophie gets the flu, then it snows, a lot, on March 31, and all we have to look forward to is that daddy will have the flu by Saturday.  Can't say, "Sorry Josh.  I know you feel worse than you ever have in your short life, but Momma needs to take a break and get a pedicure so that she can feel fifteen minutes of wellness and peace. Sorry, Sophie.  You're fever is nearly 105, but Momma has a fever too and needs to lie on the bed and feel sorry for herself."  Beware the Ides of March, indeed.

You know you're Minnesotan if you feel compelled to find blessings on a day like today.  We had a mysterious credit on our account at the pediatrician's this morning, so no copay.  Sophie's lollipop was vanilla, her favorite and a surprise inside the purple wrapper.  It might reach 50 degrees today.  It's pet show day in kindergarten.

It's April at last.

Both of my children have high fevers and brutal night time coughs. Right now.  I can't relax because Josh keeps letting out a little moan after a fit of coughing--in his sleep!  He's moaning in his sleep.

My homework that I'm reading for class tomorrow night to take my mind off the coughing I hear downstairs has me embroiled in macro and micropolitics in school communities that present obstacles to meaningful change.  So not uplifting.

Let us set all this aside and reflect on how seriously delicious Sophie's birthday cupcakes were this weekend.

Cupcake

I found this idea online to mix a can of pumpkin puree into the cake mix, and I'm not usually a supporter of all that deceptively delicious nonsense, but her party was in the morning.  I had to mitigate the sugar intake, somehow pretend that we weren't eating cupcakes for breakfast.

Sophie's Healthy Birthday Cupcakes

1 box devil's food cake mix
1 can pumpkin puree, about 15 oz. I think
1 big glob of plain lowfat yogurt
1/3 cup or so of unsweetened applesauce
1 Omega 3 egg (I love that somebody thought of feeding chickens flax seed.)

Vanilla Option:

1 box French vanilla cake mix
1 medium zucchini, peeled and practically minced
1 big glob of plain lowfat yogurt
1/3 cup or so of unsweetened applesauce
1 Omega 3 egg

For either flavor, fill the cupcake papers up to the top and smooth them.  Bake at 350 for 22 minutes.

Josh visited Dr. Rimmel, his pediatric ENT, on Tuesday for his post-op exam.  We always fill out a pain chart before we see Dr. Rimmel.  So while we waited for our turn, Josh perched on the top of the castle in the playroom to watch cable TV while I tried to get him to rate his pain.  When I asked if anything hurt, he said, "No."  I was stunned.  It's usually a litany of complaints from ears to left leg.  He just kept watching a preview for Ben 10 Alien Force as if he hadn't just said anything momentous.  When pressed, he repeated that nothing hurt, not even his ears. Bret and I had anticipated a rough return to the school routine this week, but Josh has been wonderful.  Fewer tantrums, much nicer to Sophie.  I suppose anybody might make that change after being released from a year or more of chronic pain and trouble sleeping.

I felt a physical sensation of anxiety leaving my body.  It had become so ordinary to be so tense that I hadn't realized how afraid I was about his ear pain.  Dr. Rimmel said that he had probably been experiencing referred pain from his throat infections and that we wouldn't need to come back.  Just continue to monitor his remaining hearing every 6 months or so.  We have no further need for a specialist.  This too, after the past several months, seems unbelievable. 

Of course, as soon as I told Bret the good news, Josh developed a barking cough.  But it's just a cold, a regular cold.  I'm choosing to believe Dr. Rimmel.  It's amazing to me that I get to choose to believe everything is fine.  Thank God for spring sunlight in Minnesota.

My poor mother-in-law has been reading my blog postings, and from her worried phone calls I've deduced that I made this whole tonsillectomy thing seem like brain tumor removal.  My apologies to all.  I do tend to exaggerate my emotional ups and downs...

Josh is fine.  Once we got those IV fluids in him, he perked up.  He just ate a hotdog, steamed green beans and a banana for supper.  He continues to talk in a creepy PeeWee Herman voice for a reason only he understands, but otherwise, he's almost himself. 

I know seeing is believing, so these photos are for you, Van.  It's Josh and Sophie happily making bean birthday pies for Sophie's invisible sister while I worked on a delicious potsticker soup in the kitchen behind them.

All must be well if I have enough time and energy to try new recipe ideas, right?

Potsticker Soup (adapted from a Martha Stewart no-recipe meal idea)

Simmer a couple dozen frozen dumplings from an authentic Asian market in 2-3 cans of low sodium chicken broth.
Add a big bunch of coarsely chopped watercress including stems, a sizable pile of shredded carrots, and an entire bunch of sliced green onions.
Drizzle with sesame oil.
Add a few drops of rice wine vinegar.
Cook it on low heat until it's hot enough to eat.

Eat them up, yum.  I once ate more than 30 dumplings at a little restaurant in Beijing.  They were better than this soup, but the soup was probably as close as I could get in my neighborhood.

See, Van, I even have enough emotional energy to spare a little for happy food memories.  The worst is behind us.

One of my all time favorite books to teach is The Alchemist.  On days like today, I think about its magical realism.  The universe is always paying attention to us.  If we say no to a gift, it will think we don't like gifts and stop giving them--that kind of thing.  So in my last post, the mothering genius bit was a little over the top and I needed to be put back in my place.

Sunday, I thought, was another successful day.  Josh was eating--nothing but warm Pillsbury crescent rolls, but he was hungry and eating.  He had done so well with drinking ice water from his little medicine syringe that I had sort of stopped paying attention to his fluid intake.  Then, just before bedtime, I remembered to ask if he had peed that day.  He hadn't, and I hadn't noticed.  When I thought back over the day, I hadn't seen him drinking anything besides a little squirt of water to wash down bites of crescent roll.  He refused to drink anything more than two teaspoons of water in his little syringe before bed and finally peed some rusty urine.  This morning, he again refused to drink anything at all.  I had to take him in for IV fluids and some steroids to reduce the swelling in his throat so that he would be more comfortable swallowing.  I wanted to tell him "That's what you get for not taking any of your pain medication all week," but he knew it already, and I didn't see how that would help get us through the morning--even if it vented just a smidge of my frustration.

Sophie came along, and if I had more energy right now, I would write a funny little essay about what it's like to spend 4 hours in the emergency room with an angry little boy and his three year-old sister.  I would write, with appropriate self-deprecating humor about all the mistakes I made.  But I am spent--because, the little stinker went all power and control on me when we got home!  Yes, he would rather go back to the hospital to spend the night with another needle in his arm than swallow his grape flavored Tylenol and sip the beverage of his choice!  Just like he could live without TV, Pokemon cards, or fifty of his favorite toys earlier in the week.  Taking those away had definitely resulted in more suffering for me than him.

Of course, I would have to follow through on the consequence I had told him, one that he had heard Dr. Wong say before we came home today.  I called emergency nurse Ginger to go about arranging our return to the hospital to be admitted overnight for fluids, and bless her she told me, "You're the mother.  He's the kid. He's got a full tank from today. Be the mother. Make him."  I thought I was being the mother.  But none of this natural consequence crap was going to cut it for my Josh, nor apparently for nurse Ginger.

I held his hands and pinched his nose so he would have to open his mouth, plunged some Tylenol in and waited not quite calmly while he spit it out.  Then, I went to refill the syringe.  I let him have a few minutes of quiet time alone in his room with the Tylenol, and wouldn't you know he decided he could swallow it after all, but only when enough time had passed that he could be the one to have the idea of taking it and swallow it melodramatically one mL at a time between drinks of water with mommy sitting next to him. 

I keep saying that Dr. Rimmel accidentally took the nice out of him with his tonsils, and he thinks I'm joking.  Really, this surgery is the worst, most painful thing that's ever happened to him.  He doesn't remember bringing Sophie home from the hospital, and his hearing loss didn't hurt.  The audiology testing has been uncomfortable and annoying, a little scary sometimes, but he could still eat Cheetos afterward.  Even the blood testing wasn't worth all the drama after the needle pokes.  The MRI was traumatic for him, but much more temporary than this.  And in response to this test of his mettle, he's showing more talent for manipulation than resilience.  What if this is our first real glimpse of his character? 

I know today is most likely the straw that broke his back.  He finally told me he wishes all that has happened to him in the past 8 months had happened to Sophie instead--which I've been waiting for and can completely understand--but don't think I won't be up tonight wondering if I'm reaping what I've sown in the past 6 years.

No, this isn't about the gigantic scabs in Josh's throat.  Frankly, I'm too squeamish to look.  This is about getting Josh to eat today.  Maybe any kid would eat on day 4 after a T&A, but I'd like to claim this as a moment of mothering genius.

A few days before Josh's surgery, sweet Sophia conned Daddy into buying Chewy Chips Ahoy at Cub Foods.  That's his story anyway.  As is usually the case, the grow-ups in the house finished them off before the kids had time to think about seconds.  I don't even like those cookies.  I think they're disgusting, but I've never met a cookie I wasn't willing to eat.

So anyway...when Josh emerged from the fog of whatever drugs lingered in his system on day 2 after T&A, he wanted one of those soft, chewy cookies.  I had to tell him they were gone.  He wrote me an elaborate kindergarten-type letter to explain how to solve this terrible problem.

Go to the store and buy cookies, Mom.

Yes, I did call my neighbor up the street who has three kids to ask if she happened to have any children's Tylenol suppositories.  I did jog ridiculously to her house on sleet and ice, and after I jogged ridiculously back, I did get that sucker into Josh's butt.  Unfortunately, now that it's 4 hours later, he won't let me do another one.  After hitting him with every consequence that I knew could hurt him (I took away his entire organizer full of favorite toys, his Pokemon binder, AND television), it became clear that these consequences--from his point of view--don't hurt as much as swallowing medicine after tonsillectomy or having it inserted anally by his nervous mother.  I even handed him a 5 dollar bill to let me get the medicine in him.  He shook his head woefully and handed it back.

Josh wants to be in charge of his own body.  If he would rather lie still and wish away the hurt, he can.  There is nothing more I can reasonably do.  Not that I won't try, of course.  I can hear his poor, shrinking stomach growling at 5 paces!  Under these conditions, on my best days, I wouldn't fall into the "reasonable" category.  And when I slip past the edge of my sanity (which is really never very far away), it's Bret's turn to take him to the hospital for IV fluids.

So yesterday, Josh was pretty stoned on codeine, leaning against cushions on the basement floor watching the same cartoon over and over again.  I was practically constipating myself with anxiety over this potential foreshadowing.  That is, after all, how a disturbing number of my high school students spend their afternoons...Maybe I should be thankful he won't take anymore narcotics.

I always tell the kids, "Don't wish your days away," but I'd be willing to waste a few of my own time traveling ahead to say, next Tuesday.