Posts Tagged ‘Health’

Thursday afternoon I received a call at the pharmacy that my son had a bit of a fever.

He has had a slight cough that progressed from dry a week ago to a little bit wet in the coming days, but that was it, and it’s pretty normal for me during the summer to autumn change to get that dry cough at night before bed.

So I picked him up an hour later and took him home for some Elmo, fluids and some TLC. Despite a random power outage, the evening was uneventful.

Later on that night we went into his room to get a temp reading and noticed he was at 102. So we called the doctor who instructed us to alternate from tylenol to motrin every three hours to control fever and pain, keep pushing fluids and to make an appointment tomorrow.

Friday morning I woke up knowing the day would suck, as my college roommate and I share a birthday and Friday night was our 30th birthday dinner at Ditka’s in Oak Brook. Ditka’s. Ditka’s. Ditka’s. (In Chicagoland you must say his name 4 times out of respect for his holy name) So yeah, I cancelled the dinner, apologized for the inconvenience and went back to watching Elmo with the lil’ dude and had a work conference call in the meantime.

Julie had called and told me she made an appointment with a doctor for 2pm, so as lil’ dude napped and I was showering I heard the garage door opening. For my birthday present, Julie moved some meetings and took a half day to help me take lil’ dude to the Dr’s office. What a sweetheart, then again she would be staying in the car to avoid the “sickmosphere”, but still, I appreciated the gesture.

Long story short: The doctor didn’t have time or patience to answer my questions. He heard the first two words out of my mouth, which were “fever” and “cough” and whipped out a swab and shoved it up my kid’s nose without warning. My son didn’t like this guy at all and gave him a shit-fit when he went in unannounced, which I tipped him 3 dollars in the pigskin piggy bank for later (good work son).

Word to those wanting to be doctors, even if it takes an extra 30 seconds out of your visit, make a connection with the kid you’re going to be prodding, if you don’t you’ll piss off the kid AND the parents. A simple “hello” directly to the kid makes a world of difference.

He left the room as I was still asking questions and said over me “The swab takes ten minutes.” So, any parent who has ever sat in a doctor’s office exam room for any amount of time realizes those rooms are gross. I didn’t want lil’ dude climbing or eating anything so I built up a sweat calming him down and keeping him from breaking things while he had a complete meltdown. Legs kicking, wailing like a banshee, tossing his head into my chin like a classically trained MMA fighter, etc.

Twenty minutes later the nurse comes in and says that he was “positive for A” and that the doctor would be in in a minute to talk. So the doctor comes in ten minutes later and tells me, flat out “He has the swine.” I cock my head and it’s like a judo-kick to the face. “Really?”

“I’m sending a prescription for Tamiflu to your local pharmacy, give that to him and he’ll be fine in a few days.” Says mister important doctor.

“What is the alternative to the Tamiflu? I’ve heard nothing but grief from the parents who dealt with a kid on Tamiflu.” I retort.

“You could do NOTHING. If that is your choice, but, um, I would advise it, he’s pretty sick.” Says mister important doctor.

Using that type of language towards a parent is confrontational in my opinion. Suggesting that by asking about an alternative that I would do NOTHING to help heal my child of the flu is fucking offensive, and I fucking take offense to that, fucker.

Mister important doctor makes the stand-up/follow-me motion with his hands and leads us out of the room and says to have a nice day. Meanwhile, I’m still re-asking the questions I was ignored on the first time through and I’m already in the hallway being booted from his divine presence.

I get back to the van where Julie is studying and tell her what the doctor told me, thinking he would know the difference between A and swine flu, I didn’t mention the nurse’s comment that he was positive for A. She gasps and we both immediately call our respective backups when we can’t fully comprehend things, she calls her pharmacist sister, I call my compounding pharmacist father.

My dad knows what a white coat can do to a person’s judgement but understands that when you have kids your doubtful judgement of all doctors takes a back seat to “whatever is best for my kids” so he doesn’t press the issue that going to the doctor was probably not in our best interests. But he tells me that because we’ve made the effort and now things are documented that our son has “a flu, whichever it actually is” we have to follow their instructions or risk the consequences. That all makes sense, but how do you treat a flu if not with Tamiflu? “Time, kleenex, water and soap.”

Julie’s sister is appalled that our son was diagnosed as a swine flu carrier with just a swab. The doctor we saw must have a microscope in his glasses to determine a swine flu case over Influenza A without a blood test. What he told me was just not true. There is always a potential for it to be swine, but to intentionally tell a parent that is FEAR MONGERING. She tells Julie that our son is positive for A, but you simply cannot confirm a flu case is indeed H1N1 without lab tests. Not only that, but those lab tests don’t really prove anything since the flu is still the flu!

So you can probably guess how the rest of the weekend and today have been, Julie stays 6 feet away from our kid at all times and I get to deal with this complete feeling of isolation from the entire world, on my birthday!

We cancelled my party and instead had take out ribs after lil’ dude went to bed on Saturday, and then watched Revolutionary Road. The ribs were great but HOLY SHIT, that movie was complete garbage.  But hey, at least it wasn’t Elmo.

I’ve watched Elmo in Grouchland 11 times and 23 different episodes of Sesame Street since Thursday afternoon, I’m about at the end of my Elmorope. I now liken his voice to that of my 6th grade teacher who rather than saying “Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday…” she would say “Mundee, Toosdee, Wensdee…” – I want to strangle Elmo.

Please divine architect, make my kid feel better and be symptom free so that I may return to the land of adults and humans who speak about things other than numbers and the alphabet.

BEFORE I GO CRAZY!

Oh, and today’s word on the street? “MENTALBREAKDOWN!”

Related articles by Zemanta

• Swine flu worries pet owners (cbc.ca)
• How To Protect Against Influenza A H1N1 Infection (warkah.com)
• The Flu Hunters: Racing to Outsmart a Pandemic (time.com)
• Regarding Tamiflu, Doctors and Patients Face a Question of When to Act (nytimes.com)
• H1 N1 And Your Immunity (slideshare.net)
• Beware of online swine-flu remedies: Health Canada (cbc.ca)
• WHO: H1N1 is now world’s dominant flu virus (cnn.com)
• What Does Swine Flu Feel Like? (islandmedstudent.com)
• RI tracking swine flu through electronic records (seattletimes.nwsource.com)

I’ve started to kick Julie out of the house. There is no way a woman can expect a miracle to be performed on a room full of instruments, computers and a 1974 Wurlitzer Funmaker during nap times and weeknights alone. Two out of the five weeknights I teach guitar lessons out of our house, and it seems every weekend is packed full of weddings, shopping trips and more and more fucking trips to Babies R’ Rippin’ Us Off than I care to admit.

So rather than dealing with the time crunch and having an excuse to not get my son’s new room done, I kicked the wifey out on Sunday so I could get my entire old office evacuated in preparation of paint and a race car bed. I did pretty well. The room is completely empty. But at about 8pm on Sunday through about 7am Monday morning, I was wondering if my request might end up hurting my wife and unborn twins.

Ya’ see, Julie accompanied her mother and sister and her kids, along with my son to St. Charles, Illinois’s Annual Scarecrow Festival. Fun was had by all, including a delicious cup of luke warm hot chocolate. Julie had a cup, her sister had a cup, mmmmm yummy.

As soon as Julie started heading back home to Yorkville, she started feeling queasy. She got home, cooked dinner, ate dinner and then headed up to bed around 7:30pm. Around 8pm I heard “Joel?” So I went upstairs to investigate. 11 hours later Julie was still ralphing her guts out in the bathroom while I laid awake hoping to comfort her if she returned to bed.

She came back to bed a few times, and I fetched her some crushed ice and some saltines, yet every few minutes I was jarred awake by the sounds of her spleen wanting to make contact with our toilet water and a rabid WREEEEETCH was heard throughout the entire neighborhood.

By 6:30am, as I got into the shower delirious and drunk on no sleep, Julie had just barely fallen asleep, and by the time I finished my traditional sinus rinse, she was back in the bathroom puking again. 11 hours, dozens of ralph wiggums, no fun. She wasn’t going to work today.

I headed in to work, knowing I would be called to take her to the doctor at some point, and about an hour into my day I took a call from her where she told me the OB group wanted her to get to the hospital to take in some fluids. I raced home, scooped her in my arms, threw her into the back of my pickup and raced north to Delnor’s Labor & Delivery Center.

We checked in and they immediatley tried to get her an IV running, but of course, that would’ve been what should’ve happened. Instead, my usually veiny wife was poked 4 times before the fourth nurse found a fitting vein. The not-so-successful pokers before that last nurse all called my wife ‘valvular.’ I didn’t know whether to be turned on or offended so I shut my mouth.

Two bags of Lactated Ringer’s in and we received a personal visit from our High Risk OB doctor, Dr. Losure, who came with a fresh set of wheels ready to wisk my wife away to get her cervix checked. Her cervix looks great and we got the chance to see our twins faces again, and a few print outs for the refrigerator too. Dr. Losure wheeled us back and instructed the nurse to give Julie one more bag, since she still hadn’t peed since we had first arrived at the hospital.

A few hours, and horrible soap operas later one of the doctors from the Focus on Women PB group that we se came by and cleared Julie to head home to take it easy. She’s been eating oatmeal in bird nibbles and drinking water in wussy sips ever since.

On the way home she called her sister, who, oddly enough was up all night and had taken off work that day just to pee out of her butt!

What did they ingest in common? A TEPID CUP OF HOT FUCKING CHOCOLATE. Yes, you can get food poisoning from a drink. I told my wife that she was drinking CARNY WATER and that was what made her puke puke all night.

Lesson of the day? If your hot chocolate is cool enough for you to drink it when you first get it, throw it the fuck away.

Love,

Dad.

I saw a book about deducing what your little babe was crying about just after my son was born in 2008. I found a youtube video that talked about it too. Here is the video link:  What Baby Cries Mean

After a few months I was pretty good at determining what to do in any situation based on the intensity and starting sound of the cry because of this video’s suggestions, but normally these things are happening at 1, 2, or 4 o’clock in the morning when I’m admittedly, not at my best mentally.

So I just found a little gadget at Think Geek called the Why Cry Baby Analyzer.

Using this chart:

Pretty interesting concept, but I can’t see spending 100 bucks just to know what my kid is crying about. At the early ages there are pretty much only four potential reasons (basic, I know) why a young babe would be wailing.

Hungry, Tired, Poop or Annoyed.

I learned to check the neck for any tags or annoying little things poking the skin, then smell the ass, then determine if it’s nap time or if teet squirts are needed.

Yes, I just called breast milk “teet squirts.” I’m copyrighting that for a line of clothing made for moms that is pre-dirtied with yellow and white stains in the breasticular area. If you steal my idea, I will crush you greco-roman wrastlin’ style.

Since late June 2009 when we found out we were being blessed with having twins, we have discovered two distinct types of people, in regards to their discovery that we are having twins. So as to not dwell or end on a negative point, I will discuss the shitfaces first.

Shitfaces:

Shitfaces are broken down into three types of people:

1. People who already have twins and are offended that you will be sharing in their experience and stealing their thunder. Nothing you can say to stand up for yourself is of any merit because you haven’t experienced what they have, yet. You are dumb, you are walking into hell, and whatever happens with your twins is easy compared to what they deal with on a daily basis with theirs.
2. People who are normally “OH YEAH?” people. Even if you just won the lottery, which we kind of just did, they won more. Even people without children have made comments to somehow insinuate that their life is more difficult, yet we haven’t insinuated that our life will be difficult, it will just be different.
3. People who immediately react with negativity from a first person standpoint, as if the misplaced empathy they feel immediately makes them feel better by saying something negative. I have actually had a good friend of mine laugh out loud as soon as I told him and instead of saying “Congrats man!” he blurted out “THAT SUCKS!!” Does it? How?

Now I’m not a vengeful person, nor do I wish ill will on these people, rather I feel sorry for folks like this. There are so many things to stand up for in life and to make one of them a negative one is beyond me. If these peeps actually feel better for having spouted something like I have mentioned above, they probably have never realized how much better they could feel if they offered advice when we’re in the weeds, or freaking out or unsure of something about the day to day logistics of parenting twins, or even just an ear on the phone if they don’t have twins, or even kids at all.

These people could set themselves up as resources, friends or the people you remember for saying really really cool shit when they hear the news.

The Citizens of Awesomeville:

The residents of Awesomeville have four types:

1. Parents of twins who instantly welcome you into the gang with a secret handshake, a knowing nod and the offering of an ear to talk into, should you need it. These folks dealt with the Shitfaces, and they know the value of positive thinking, speaking and acting. They know that the times when you are unsure about things are the times when you feel most vulnerable to negative thought and that even the smallest suggestion of a struggle on down the road can freak you out for a few days.
2. Parents of any child or children that give you the look of “If anyone can do it, you guys can do it.” One of my best friends on the planet is one of those guys who mutters things you see on the walls of corporate offices or grade schools at random times and even he was stumped, and ended up saying quite loudly as he embraced me in a giant bearhug: “You are going to kick a shit ton of ass my friend!” I need that when I’m not in front of my wife, I really do, and it is completely appreciated.
3. The people who love babies and everything about babies and make themselves honorary family members. I remember when we were just about to have our son and these people used to creep me out. I was always saying to myself “STOP TOUCHIN MY LADY’S BELLY YO!” Yet you don’t realize that as soon as your baby is born, they will shower that kid and you with love as if they are actually in your family. I have a friend through other friends that I don’t really talk to, but I picture her first when talking about these type people as she always gets up when we see her and asks to hold or hang out with my son. She doesn’t get creepy and whip out her tit trying to breast feed him, or take him into another room out of our line of sight, she’s just perfectly happy giving my family some attention because it makes her happy.
4. The people who remember. These are the people, regardless if you’re having twins, or a singleton, or getting a new job, or moving into a new house, these people, as unoften as you might see them, they remember. They ask. They understand that they aren’t in your life every day, but they want to make sure that the time they spend with you, no matter how short, is worthwhile and meaningful. Just this past weekend we went to two friends’ 30th birthday party and it was unreal. Here we are, driving an hour into the city, sweating from the walk of carrying the little dude, and watching wife waddle with the backpain and constant early contractions, and we’re being embraced genuinely. I’d guess about 80% of our friends there knew about the twins, but even those that just thought Jules was just pregnant were excited to see us and made sure to convey that excitement appropriately. None of that “WHERE YOU BEEN DUDE?” or “DUDE, YOU NEVER GO OUT ANYMORE!” or my favorite “YOUR WIFE LET YOU LEAVE THE CRIB EVER MAN?” – Mature adults realize that time passes quickly when you haven’t seen someone, but true friends don’t care how long it’s been, right now means more than all those times you weren’t out on the town knocking back jaegerbombs and playing beer pong on skyscraper roofs.

In conclusion, some people frickin rule. Some people need a good smack upside the head with their own negativity and a good one on one with their own disappointment at how their lives turned out because of their shitty attitude.

NOTE: Curse words fucking rule.

Related articles by Zemanta

• 10 Effective Ways to Parenting Toddlers While Dining Out! (parenting-success.com)
• Parenting in Public (attachmentparenting.org)
• Parent Help For New Parents: How To Cultivate That Sense of Self-Worth In Your Child (jaysdad.com)
• Baby Care: Tips for Caring for a Newborn (parenting-success.com)