I'm Sorry, Today Is What?

How is it February tomorrow?  I have completely missed January.  There was that first week, back when I posted last, and  now here we are at today.  I honestly have no sense that 24 days have passed.  What?  Where?  Where are they?  No idea!

Jeremelon lost his job the day before we were slated to leave for California.  That allowed him to come with us.  My grandmother's memorial was a lovely, small affair.  I tried very hard not to cry, but when they stuck that Kleenex in her grave, I lost it.  My grandmother always had a tissue up her sleeve.  (Apparently, I did not get her sinuses, as I have no reason and no ability to use tissues unless I'm sick or crying or suffering from allergies.)  It was a whirl of family and emotion.  If that wasn't enough (and really, it so was) on top of being income-less, the plans we were making fell through on EVERY. SINGLE. FRONT.  Instantaneously.  Through circumstances we had no control over.  We did get to see an old friend who lives in LA, but I still feel really horrid that I didn't have a chance to say goodbye because the berrykin needed to go to bed.  (Originally so horrid, in fact, that I had a nightmare that he yelled at me that night.  But I think that was more due to the emotional upheaval going on, and this being an easy release.  It is, after all, a great deal easier to feel horrid that I didn't say goodbye than it is to grieve.)  We decided to stay a couple extra days because when I said we were leaving, my mom got sad...more sad, anyway.  We should have left the day after everyone else did, and then maybe we could have cut off everything else that followed.

I caught the flu (I didn't know it was the flu, as it was mostly a coughing head cold - the aches and fevers didn't come until later).  Spent two days in bed.  During those two days, it was clear we were in the way of my mom trying to get life on an even keel again.  But what were we to do?  I didn't want to expose my family to germs in the enclosed space of a car for half a day if I could help it.  After two days, I felt well enough that I packed up the car all by myself and did my sick laundry so my mom wouldn't have to.  All was fine and dandy when we left.  Then we hit rush hour going into LA, which meant we spent an extra two + hours to get through the city.  Then about half an hour before the border to Arizona, we stopped.  Everybody stopped.  Major, humongous accident that involved a semi and enough force that the glass spatter was probably a mile long.  Middle of the desert, no side streets.  No way to get out, turn around.  But we had a good book on the iPod and were content to listen while the berrykin slept.

Except about halfway through our wait (probably 45 minutes), the berrykin woke up gasping for air and coughing horribly.  He screamed.  His body went rigid.  No matter what I did, he kept coughing and gasping and screaming.  Since we were mostly stopped and never made it above 5mph even when we did move, I pulled him out of his seat to calm him down.  His breathing sounded awful.  His cough sounded awful.  He was miserable.  I knew from my own experience that the worst part in the first couple of days was the sore throat.  I thought that must be why he screamed, as I could relate.  He slept on me fitfully until we started picking up speed, and then we backed up traffic while I tried to get him back in his seat.  Rigid screaming ensued, so I told Jeremelon to drive under fifteen.  He couldn't make that work, though, so I eventually forced the poor, sobbing berrykin back into his seat.  By the time we made it to the rest area about ten minutes down the road, he was asleep again.  His breathing was still awful.  Now I was pretty panicked and freaking out, but I wasn't driving so we just kept on.  What else could we do in the middle of the desert?  I thought surely that would be the worst hour of my life while he was two.  I was wrong.

We made it home without further problem, except that he kept coughing.  He slept the rest of the trip, for which I was supremely thankful.  I don't really remember the next day, except that during the day, he played and enjoyed his toys and aside from his scary cough, didn't sound too bad.  Oh, and we tried to take him to one of those little clinics in Walgreens because Jeremelon's mom insisted we check him for strep (I *knew* it wasn't strep, but I wanted them to check out his breathing and his cough, so I didn't push the issue).  Except every single one in the area (there are like ten of them or more) was booked, and walk-in wait was about two hours.  So we didn't get to see anyone.  And then that night was SO AWFUL.  He woke up gasping every hour or two.  We could hear his breathing from a room away.  We were both exhausted from the drive and everything else, so we took turns sitting up so he wouldn't wake up without one of us to comfort him (for the second night, I guess).  Next morning, we took him to a clinic.  The nurse practitioner went through all the routine intro questions, then stopped.  She told us to take him to an urgent care because he sounded too awful, and she wouldn't be able to treat him properly there.  She directed us to one some distance away, and there we went.  The waiting room was PACKED.  I was terrified they'd make us sit there for a long time while Berrykin sobbed and screamed and gasped and coughed, and all I wanted to do was cry with him.  A nurse took us back, though, did his initial work up, brought the doc in.  They gave him a nebulizer treatment and some steroids, but his oxygen levels only rose about three points.  They did verify he had Flu B, though, so they sent us to Children's Hospital which, in a huge turn of relief, happened to be next door.  It was also packed.  By the time we got called back to register, I was having something of a nervous breakdown.  The registering nurse took one listen of his cough, recognized the awful sounds he was making, and moved us to a room immediately.  Respiratory came in, took a listen, made an irritated comment that an oxygen level of 93 (he'd gone up three more points by then) was dischargeable.  But apparently the doctors made a bigger stink for us because he came back later to administer ANOTHER round of nebulized medicine.  There was a lot of confusion about why we were there if we'd been to an urgent care already, despite arriving with paperwork in hand.  Eventually, we found out that the urgent care had given him basic asthma treatment, and the ER doc said that of course he didn't get better, because it wasn't an asthma problem.  When the ER attending arrived, all he did was blink and say, "Yep, this is croup.  We're going to keep him overnight for observation, because nights two and three are the worst part."  We were in the ER room for...five? hours, I think, while they waited for a room to open upstairs.  Poor baby boy wanted nothing more than to get off the bed and get the pulse-ox off his toe by the time we moved upstairs.  By that time, the MOMENT he heard the door, he would fly into a panic because someone else was coming in to do something to him.  He would claw his way across me (I held him for almost the entire 5 hours, which was a mark of how awful he felt) to get to Jeremelon, who was just a smidge farther away.

The hospital stay wasn't too bad.  The nurses were very nice.  The room was big, and we were by ourselves.  The bathroom was crazy far away, and that proved to be irritating because I was hydrating because I was still sick and there was a door we had to be buzzed through in between.  They had Disney movies on five different channels.  They gave him more steroids to open up his throat because his larynx was so swollen from the croup, so that night wasn't actually not so bad.  They discharged us the following evening, after making sure he was eating and drinking.  By that point, he was back to bouncing off the walls.

In fact, he's STILL bouncing off the walls.  Between the albuterol, the steroids, and the anti-flu pills, he's been a crazy sir for a week or more now.  Oh, and Jeremelon developed the sore throat while we were at the ER, and was in full-blown flu mode by the next day.  We thought everything was going to get better when we got home.  I was feeling much more...well...I was feeling not terrified anymore.  I left Berrykin with Jeremelon and his dad to take a shower and wash the hospital and germs and whatnot off.  Shortly before I got out, I heard the Berrykin start screaming.  Not his angry scream.  His, "Mommy, I'm in serious pain and I NEED YOU!" scream.  I heard Jeremelon talking to him, so I couldn't imagine what could possibly be wrong.  Jeremelon didn't know either.  The berrykin kept giving me his hand to kiss and make better, so I uncurled his fingers and discovered the tips of four of them were giant blisters.  He'd grabbed the lightbulb on the nightlight in the hall.  He's attempted this before, but never managed all the way for whatever reason.  I have been trying to move the stupid thing since we got here, but it was always back in the same place.  So we had a screaming toddler again.  I managed to convince him to leave his hand in chilled water, and that's how he spent the rest of his day. It was hugely messy - we'd gone through every towel in the cupboard by the time we went to bed.  But it worked, thankfully.  He still won't do anything with his hand, despite it being basically healed.  He WILL leave bandaids on, though, which is a huge improvement.  I'm still pissed off about it (especially since the $()*#&% nightlight was back in place the next morning), but we coped.  Barely.

The worst part of it all, the part that still brings me to tears, was sitting with him during the nebulizer treatments.  The first one, we had to give him ourselves.  He wanted nothing to do with it, and was so pathetically sad when he gave up fighting.  The second time, the respiratory doc bruised his face to keep the mask on - my poor boy had black eyes for three or four days afterward.  Both times, the only thing that calmed him down at all was reciting his favorite book from memory.  He'd stop screaming to listen, and then all the fight would go out of him and the tears would keep rolling, and he'd moan.  Jeremelon and I had to take turns because neither of us could get through what's essentially ten sentences without crying from the heartbreak.

That is the reason I decided in 2006 that I didn't want kids.  As much as I desperately did want them, I have enough trouble dealing with my own illness.  Dealing with my baby sick and desperate and terrified?  It just about killed me.  Maybe that's true of all parents.  I don't know.  All I know is that here we are, tomorrow is February, and I still feel like I'm on the verge of a nervous breakdown every day.

I HATE January.  February is a close second, but January and I are not friends.  We are mortal enemies.  I will be very glad to put it behind us.

(Berrykin, btw, is fine now.  He's hyper, and we are having to sleep train and nap train him from scratch (which sucks beyond exhaustion), and he won't use his fingers, but otherwise, he's dandy.  We went to the zoo a couple days ago, and he did beautifully.)