the no good, very bad week: a tale in three parts

Crisis #1.

Last Sunday was going along pretty normally. It's typically Laundry Day around here, so we buzz around the house, doing chores, watching movies and eating snacks. That afternoon Sam was having just such a snack while The Husband and Lydia were entertaining themselves with a book or somesuch in her room when suddenly . . .

Ka-doosh! The entire contents of Sam's dinner comes right back out of him and up onto me. Keep in mind I'm still nursing this child, so I was at point blank range. It came up through his nose and mouth. He looked as shocked as I was. He also looked NOT DONE.

"Whoa!" I exclaimed, hopping him up in my lap just in time for another wave to hit as The Husband came running in to see what all the hubbub was about. EVERYTHING came up, all the milk that he had consumed that day. It was downright freaky to see an infant throw up like that. Lydia never did this with us. This . . . this was new.

After we all got cleaned up Sam seemed a bit exhausted from his little event so he napped in my arms for a while. I tentatively let him nurse again a bit later and he kept it down then slept some more. Maybe it was a one-time thing.

Oh, alas. After his next feeding, he threw up again as Lydia shouted, "Eww! Milk! Messy!" We knew I would be calling the doctor the next day. Something seemed to be amiss.

Monday came around and Sam seemed like my normal baby boy again. He kept down breakfast and when I spoke to his doctor's office on the phone they said just to watch him to make sure he was wetting diapers and bring him in if he throws up anymore. There was none of that, however, and we sat on the couch, watching documentaries and episodes of Mythbusters.

Crisis #2

Back at work on Tuesday, I was glad to be getting back to my normal routine and ready for a calmer week. That evening The Husband was planning on going out to dinner with some co-workers from his office so it was going to be just me and the kids. Near the end of the day I was mentally planning dinner in my head while heading toward the front office to leave when a co-worker told me I had a call waiting.

And it was The Daycare. Uh oh. Lydia fell . . . I hear "Lydia fell" a few times and I remember waiting for the other shoe to drop -- I thought her arm was going to be broken. Lydia fell and busted her head on the floor . . . she's okay . . . she might need a stitch. A stitch. Stitches. STITCHES.

As my mental gears shifted into Child Recovery Mode my first few drafts of the afternoon actually involved just me getting the kids, then the stitches, then home so The Husband could still have his night out. Then I realized that might be silly and after I got everything worked out, I had an appointment in hand for Lydia at Children's Hospital, The Husband would meet us there along with his mother so she could take the now non-barfing Sam home.

Off I go to The Daycare and there is Lydia right in the front office, happy as a clam from eating all the M&M's she wants and a small gash of sorts on her forehead. To tell the truth, it looked worse to me when I saw it than what I imagined over the phone. I mean, yikes.

Children are gathered, Lydia gets a temporary Band-Aid, and up we go to Children's off of Acton Road, where I first run by a McDonald's since a hungry Lydia is an extremely ornery Lydia.

Being two years old, Lydia is only so willing to cooperate with ordeals like this. Thankfully there were awesome toys in the waiting room, and Wi-Fi for The Husband. Once we entered The Room Of Serious Business, however, there are no toys and Lydia ups the uncooperativeness level. Even the Spongebobs on the wall cease to amuse her.





Lydia ends up receiving three stitches. How do you give a two-year-old three stitches, you ask? Why, you strap her down to a papoose board! Ohh, can you just hear the screaming? My poor sweet baby girl, she was just beside herself with fear. It was horrible. The Husband and I both tried to talk to her and sooth her the best we could but the situation was just too alien and Lydia was just too young to truly understand. It took between ten to twenty minutes to stitch her up, but to all of us (the doctor and nurse included) it felt like an hour.

Once Lydia received her Badge of Honor and was unstrapped she was much happier in The Husband's arms while eating some Teddy Grahams and apple juice. I was mentally shot and was using the rest of my strength to keep from dissolving into tears. Can you believe my first thought was to go through this by myself with Sam in tow??

"What a horrible day," I mumbled to The Husband as I crawled into bed beside him that night.



Crisis #3

Remember Sam and the throwing up? Okay, good. Just checking.

It's Friday, I'm at work, finishing up my lunch at 11:00 a.m. because I'm starving. I get a call; it's The Daycare -- Sam's teacher. Sam's throwing up, continuously, everything came up, and now he is dry heaving. I call the doctor and set up an appointment for 4:00 p.m. and head off to get Sam.

When I arrive, his teacher's in the process of changing him out of his third outfit of the day, and he is PALE. I have never seen someone so ghastly pale, and here is my son, my baby four-month-old son, white as a sheet. I scoop him up and hold him in my arms. He is limp; absolutely exhausted from heaving, but five minutes later he has another wave of dry heaves.

I am pretty worried, and I'm also thinking that 1) I'm not waiting until a 4:00 appointment, and 2) I can't drive the 30 minutes to his pediatrician alone with him in the backseat, worried that he will have another wave of dry heaves and start to choke on the bile he's forcing up.

I call The Husband and ask him to meet me at The Daycare so we can ride together to the doctor, then call the doctor again to explain how Sam looks and they say I can head right up there.

It takes The Husband a good 30 minutes to get there and it's a long 30 minutes indeed. Sam looks worse and worse while I'm there waiting, and I amend my plan again for us to head to a closer satellite office of the pediatrician once The Husband arrives.

He finally gets there and we zoom to the satellite office with me in the back, perched oddly on Lydia's carseat monitoring Sam.

At the satellite office they check Sam over to make sure he's responsive and has good oxygen levels, and a nurse talks to our regular office to make sure we can be brought to our pediatrician as soon as we arrive there.

Off we head to our regular doctor's office and are immediately brought back into a waiting room. Finally, after a few hours of poking, blood-taking, and a urine sample (obtained via sticky baggie), we had a diagnosis: a urinary tract infection. He most likely has had it all week, poor baby.

We head home with a prescription for an antibiotic in hand and a happier outlook ahead. Diagnosis made! Problem solved! All's well that ends well . . . right?

The entire family eventually gathers back at the house and it's decided that Lydia can still go to the Fall festival that The Daycare is holding that night along with The Husband and his mom. That way The Husband can retrieve his car that was left there earlier in the day, and I will stay home with poor Sam.

Our first attempt to give Sam his medicine fails miserably -- he barfs it right back up before The Husband even finishes giving it to him. Well, I can't blame him too much. He still must be feeling quite unsettled and the medicine didn't come in breastmilk flavor. Off go Lydia (dressed as Frankenstein, of course), The Husband, and Grandma to the festival while I figure I'll attempt the medicine again along with a milk chaser.

On the second attempt of the medicine, the addition of the milk to help make it go down did no good at all. Everything just came right back up and Sam looked miserable again. Well, this was doomed to failure. I called the after hours nurse, who agreed that this just wasn't going to work, and I quickly found myself for the second time this week heading up to Children's Hospital.



The Husband met me there (Lydia went home for the night with her grandparents) with a now-wailing Sam. His vitals were taken and we were given some Pedialyte to give him, but he would have none of that. After a bit, they asked us to try some milk, which Sam was much more willing to gulp down. More blood was taken, this time a whole mess of blood via a vein in his arm; and another urine sample was retrieved, this time by a catheter. Poor Sam was starting to look a little distrustful of us.

These tests told us again what we already knew; they were just trying to figure out whether or not they wanted to admit him into the hospital. By the time the urine test came back Sam had eaten a few times so it was decided that if he did not throw up any more, they would give him a shot of a decently potent antibiotic to bypass his unsettled stomach and we would go for a checkup in the morning. Thankfully, Sam kept everything down, so the shot was received and we finally left a bit before midnight.

We all slept in a bit the next morning, even Sam, before finally dredging ourselves out of bed for one last doctor's visit. Sam already looked ten times better and the doctor was pleased with how he was doing. We finally left to gather Lydia and head over to my father's house to have a normal, football-watchin' afternoon.



Epilogue

And if I ever see a doctor's office again, it'll be too soon, right? Well, yeah, but that doesn't mean we don't have any plans to go back.

Though Lydia's stitches are dissolvable, we go back next Tuesday to have them removed in order to decrease any scarring for her. She probably will always have some sort of scar there, however. The way she's been tripping and running into walls this weekend, I also suspect they won't be her last set of stitches, too.

As for Sam, it is apparently rare enough for a young child to get a UTI so that when it happens, they have to go in later for additional testing to see what, if anything, caused the infection. In many cases, there is a congenital reason that causes the urine to back up into the kidneys, creating the UTI. So, in about a month or so, Sam will find himself back at Children's Hospital, undergoing some testing of his renal system to see if there was any specific cause of his infection. If there is, then we shall cross that bridge when we get to it. I can't worry much more about it now.

As for today, I am just thankful that my children are happy, healthy (or getting there), and cute.