Hell Day

Yesterday:

Wow.

Just, wow.

An urgent care visit and an ER visit, both in the same day? Sigh.

Let's recap:

Morning: Family awakes up at 8am. Mama is stiff and sore and already has a migriane; very unusual for the morning. Mama takes Oxycodone. Family goes to Gymboree. Mama hides under play equipment and watches children play. Tries to explain to people who give her funny looks that she's in pain. Oxycodone takes away joint pain but not headache.

After Gymboree, go to the wholesale store for dye-free baby Tylenol and food. Migraine increases and is joined by queasiness, a brand new symptom in 10+ years of frequent migraine.

Go home. Daddy & Baby play while Mama tries desperately to sleep.

Around 4pm, I woke up crying and kinda half-screaming because the pain was that bad. This is the worst migraine I've had. Am trying to compare to childbirth. Don't remember crying during childbirth, only screaming. Go to Urgent Care with 30 seconds left for them to take new patients.

The Urgent Care doctor is calm and mumbly and moves carefully and not loudly. Reminds me multiple times that I need to go to a neurologist and he can refer one if I start going to him as my regular doctor. His nurse gives me a shot of Phenergan ("do not take while breastfeeding"!) for the nausea, but he refuses to give me migraine rescue meds because I'm still breastfeeding.

So he prescribes Vicodin ES. And Phenergen.

I told him Vicodin wouldn't work and could he just prescribe Frova? Even just one?

And he said no, I will not give you one dose of migraine rescue meds that are relatively safe for nursing, but here's 20 Vicodin.

So, well, I have plenty of Vicodin to deal with my join pain now. Which is helpful.

So we go home, and I go back to bed, and try to sleep. I awake up crying again and while B is in checking one me, we hear Elijah screaming in pain. B runs to him, and then I hear B's panicky voice telling Elijah, "Let me see, I have to see, let me see." Adrenaline dulls the pain for a moment and I jump up. With a slightly clearer head than B, I manage to see that Elijah has a gash on the inside of his lip and one on the outside. I assume he's bitten through his lip and kind of panic. I grab my shoes and the diaper bag and we go to the ER.

The bleeding stops on the way, and Elijah laughs at all the sick people in the waiting room. And runs around banging on chairs and cheering. I lean on a chair, trying not to throw up.

Eventually I suggested we just take him home and go to his regular doctor the next day, just to be safe. But then we got called into a room. I continued trying not to throw up while we waited for nurses and doctors. He screamed at them all, terrified of doctors now. I tried to ignore the world and my body while lying on the room's bed. B and Elijah named all the things in the room and watched Monk on the tv. (We were in Kids Care, and Monk was on TV. A woman murdered her husband on-screen. This didn't seem appropriate for the childrens' ward.) Then the doctor checked Elijah's lip, determined that the wound does NOT go all the way through, and sent us home.

Elijah fell asleep in the car with minimal fussing, we picked up my prescriptions, and then headed home. When I went to sleep at midnight, the pain was still there, but I was able to eat some mashed potatoes.

Today, Elijah is very short-tempered and I am very fragile, but we are alive, and okay, and things will be fine.



The happy patient.

I want to be Tom Ballard when I grow up.

Today is:
-vertigo
-baby & mama can't stop coughing
-good beef roast for dinner
-cream
-not getting carded when Mama Coyote and Mama Kacy should have been carded
-not having enough milk for baby and his coughing demands
-watching Waiting for God

Good-niiiight.

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Updates for today:
-Elijah is getting better
-I am getting sicker
-Brian is now sick
-we have a new couch that is awesome
-Elijah can sign "want", "pain", and "owl" now
-seeing a 16 month old using ASL captivates people everywhere we go

And I will try tomorrow to answer Auntie Cold's excellent question on boys in dresses.

Morning, and Boys in Pink II

Elijah has croup, which is scary, but also Prednisolone, which makes it less scary. The coughing and not being able to get his breath was scary, but that phase has passed, at least for the moment. We're keeping the house cool, on the doctor's recommendation, to combat the fever and help keep his chest from tightening up and making it hard to breathe again. So far, so good.

Although now my throat is scratchy, so we'll see :p

Elijah wore pink sweat pants to the doctor, because he picked them out. A man in the waiting room was confused.

We still have six guppies, which means that so far they are too fast for the turtle. Which is fine by me. The guppies add something awesome to the tank. It is less boring now :)

I'm not awake yet. Someone give me a subject to blog about.

Sick Day

I called the doctor today, because Elijah has a bad cough.

I'm not sure how to describe how hard that was for me.

The appointment is at 3.

Sneezes & Pictures

I'm sick.

Being sick makes me incredibly whiny.

Thai medicine helps me be less whiny.

Elijah is not sick, which is good. He has also been very accommodating the last couple of days, playing with his toys and watching his videos and giving me hugs when I ask.

To spare you the whining (since when do I want to do that?), have some pictures.

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Dressed all in black. He got very confused by those socks and took them off.


Looots of toys.


All cleaned up and sorted!


He was really loving that watermelon.


This is my home while I'm sick. It's full of magazines and books... which mostly get ignored in favor of the computer. (Except Nanny 911, which is there too.)


This is the toy cat Elijah picked up at the grocery store :)

Almost back to normal?

9pm
Today has been strange. Everyone's still down, but recovering. Brian stayed home from work to continue recovering, and so we could talk and have some de-stress time. Which was helpful and successful, and I'm very grateful.

The baby had a nice nap, which was nice.

We had dinner at the table for the first time in... I don't remember how long. Elijah was thrilled with his food and there was lots of giggling and talking.



Dinner was a frozen skillet meal thing, that was surprisingly tasty. Rotini with chicken and vegetables in a garlic butter sauce.



Dinner was funny!

I've gotten the kitchen cleaned up for the first time in quite a few days, too, and I feel accomplished for that. I'm hoping after the last of the day's dogwalks, and a baby bath, I can settle down and have some relaxation time online.

I think I had a lot more to say about today, but between the barking dog and the fussing baby, I don't think I can think well enough to come up with it.

There will be a couple of more photos and some videos to see later. I'll post again then.

Bad weekend.

What an awful weekend. Bleh.

Friday afternoon: Mama gets sick. Aunt Dani is the best person ever and comes to take babyface to play with basenjis all afternoon.
Friday evening: Babyface gets sick.
Friday night: Mama, daddy, and babyface spend half the night in the ER. Babyface laughs at ER nurse. ER nurse sends us home.
Saturday: Dani is sick.
Sunday daytime: Uncle Chris is sick. Aunt Nicole is fighting off being sick. Mama is cranky. Daddy is cranky. Babyface laughs at us all.
Sunday night: Daddy gets sick.

Uuugh.

And we have a pediatrician's appointment at 9am. I don't see how we can possibly make it.

Uuuugh.

And more house stuff has to happen this week.

I have a lot of frozen food to get us through the week. I am currently not ashamed of that at all. I should be, but I'm not.

And I'm hungry. That's a good sign.

Now for more SmartWater and apple juice...

Goodnight.

Late night...

2:50am, four hours, a dose of Zofran and $200 later, we're home from the ER.

Elijah is fine, no need to worry. The anti-nausea meds seem to be exactly what he needed. We plan to rest tomorrow as much as we can.

V8 and celery salt never tasted so good. I have ribs to eat, too, thanks to Chris and Dani.

I hope to make a bigger post tomorrow, a lot of it with thanks to Dani for taking care of the babyface while I was sick.