Cold Spaghetti

The threat of not having indoor plumbing during Paul’s renovation work this weekend drove me to Mobile to stay with the parents Saturday night. It was a desperate situation; my Dad was on death’s door (literally, he didn’t go to work Thursday or Friday — we called in a priest to perform last rites) but I felt that we had no choice. Plus, I had to retrieve the kids’ old summer clothes from the attic if I were going to sell them back to the CCEX this week.

Right before we left, Will complained of being cold. Then sneezed. Uh-ho.

Then we got to Mobile, where my Mom was getting sick, too. I spent the weekend caring for my parents and Will… with a perfectly healthy Kate driving us all crazy. Sunday night, we sped home… I was terrified that the kids would bring the end to my dear parents, who were both sick and exhausted or that both Kate and I would succumb.

Monday morning, Will seemed better. We had assumed he would be home from school, but Will insisted he was okay and was running around with enough energy that we decided to try it out.

It was a mistake. He did fine all day, but when we had him home that night, my Mommy instinct kicked in. No real reason in particular, but Ana’s strep, combined with the fact that he seemed to have stalled in the getting better department made me think he needed to be seen. He stayed home today (despite being incredibly annoying before school this morning — he clogged the front toilet, which started overflowing and didn’t tell anyone until Paul noticed two inches of pee water pouring out of the bathroom door — annoying and bad behavior was another clue that he was probably less healthy than he was appearing). We traded childcare all day between meetings until his doctor’s appointment late this afternoon.

He’s got strep. Now Paul is saying his throat hurts. Kate came home with goopy eyes and has sneezed a few times. The jury is out on those two, but Will is definitely home one more day.

It took a ginger ale tonic and 30 minute of intense work, but we managed to get Will to get the classic pink stuff down. 19 more doses over the next 10 days to go. I’m dreading each and every one.

My Dad’s company does a lot of business in New Orleans and rents an apartment here for business use — thankfully, it’s not being used for the next few days, so the kids and I are using it. It’s letting us do laundry (still no washer and dryer) which is a great thing considering we had three huge bags of wet stinky towels from the morning’s exploding toilet. Tonight and tomorrow night are going to be in the 30s, so the kids and I staying here will hopefully help keep them warm and healthy — when the wind blows, the back rooms are freezing. Paul is home, using every minute of in-house-with-no-kids to put in extra hours at work and on the house. He’s closed off the back rooms and is sleeping in a sleeping bag in the front of the house.

Paul is hoping to work nonstop on the house this weekend, so we need a healthy house. Germs, be gone!

— The stomach flu hit this weekend. Kate was implicated, having thrown up for a few hours late Wednesday night (she was pretty cool about it… she’d retch in the sink, hold her hand out to run her pacifier under the water, and pop it back in her mouth.) No fever or other symptoms, so we went to school on Thursday and attended the parade on Friday. Friday she started showing signs of feeling unwell (i.e.: she demanded to be held, versus the usual, when she acts like she is being boiled in hot oil when someone tries to hold her). By Saturday, she was warm and even more cuddly. Many many many diaper explosions. My parents came into town Friday for the parade and ended up staying through Sunday morning, because my Mom came down with
something similar Saturday afternoon which kept her violently ill all night. The real fun was that no-one-exists-in-the-world-but-me neighbor partied hearty for most of the night… 6 feet from where my Mom was trying to recover. We are pretty much at wit’s end here, as I am pretty sure the stress from his consistent noise violations is going to give us both ulcers. Fun times.

— But we still have managed good fun. Friday’s parade was awesome, as was the ball (more on that, later.) Saturday, Paul and my Dad installed the door and windows in the back. It is officially closed to the elements. We can walk through the house to the backyard — something we haven’t been able to do in a long, long time. Mom watched cuddly Kate inside while I took Will to a friend’s house for an Iris/Tucks Mardi Gras party and saw parts of both parades. Will was an absolute delight: polite, sharing throws with other kids, so sweetly waving and following “Throw me somethin’ Mister” with “please.”

— Thoth was great. We hosted the parade party/provided the close potty for friends and watched the parade en masse.

— We didn’t attend parades today. Paul worked and I played with the kids (think: long paper art project), took 3 walks, went out to stand in line for our first Randazzo’s king cake (my opinion: good, but a big cinnamon roll, too sweet for me), and stopped by Emmy’s for an impromptu playdate with Ana and Elliot.

— And now, I’m fighting off flu. Typical symptoms. We have a 50% attendance rate going for Fat Tuesday parades and I think that this percentage is going to go down a bit after this year. Which is more than fine here. I’m hoping for a great family day and to feel well enough for some great red beans and rice.

Just so my friend doesn’t feel that she’s the only 30-something who feels like she is falling apart, I’m writing of my newest aging issue. No, not the back thing. No, not the toe (which is definitely seeming broken, as it is getting worse not better.) One that has been on the horizon for years and one that I dutifully exacerbated in my attempts to thwart it. You know how dentists tell you to brush very gently, in little circles on each tooth, never hard, never “back and forth,” always in little circles? They really aren’t kidding about that.

When you don’t brush in circles, when you rub on your gumline thinking that you need to be “massaging” it (as once recommended by your dentist), and when you do all of this on gums prone to recession due to thin tissue (a heredity thing) and early braces on small teeth (an unfortunate thing), you can do a lot of damage. Apparently, I have.

Months ago, when I saw our dentist, she referred me to a periodontist to check the gum recession on a few teeth. The gingiva over my teeth (that rounded part of tissue) was receding to the point where the bone underneath was visible and possibly eroding away (it’s not tough like enamel.) I’ve known that I had problems with recession since college — a long long time. Back then, I was told to brush at the gum line to massage the gums back down, which is what I thought I was doing. I brushed and flossed the heck out of them. And now, well, now I don’t have much gum left on 7 — yes SEVEN — teeth. All the teeth are in the back of my mouth, since I was most concerned over plaque in these areas and worked the hardest back there.

So on November 7th, I am scheduled first for a tooth scaling and then to have two teeth surgically repaired through a soft tissue graft, where tissue is taken from the roof of my mouth and placed over my receding gums to bulk up the thin tissue and cover up the exposed root. The good news is that I don’t have periodontal disease, although I am currently a good candidate. So the prognosis is good. What is unfortunate is that the surgery is costly, insurance only covers to a certain point, and I’m looking at doing one or two teeth each year for the next 3-4 years (so as to spread out what can be covered by insurance). We are nearing an open enrollment period for benefits and are considering an insurance change and/or getting Aflac as a secondary provider. In the meantime, while we wait for all the teeth to get done, I’ll have scaling (which Paul had done earlier this year) every 12-18 months to clear any exposed root, and three normal cleanings each year.

The periodontist recommendations included: using a toothpaste with a very low RDA (Relative Dentin Abrasivity) which is a measure of how abrasive the paste is on your teeth. Most toothpastes are really abrasive, which can be damaging. (Who knew?) She recommended Biotene Gel with Fluoride (an RDA of 60) and using a toothbrush of very small size with extra soft bristles, which can be special ordered since they are hard to find in stores. Yowza.

So today’s public health announcement: gently brush in circles!

The Preface: We have no child safety equipment in our home. None. However, we do not have stairs in our home. My parents have even less safety measures in their home. And they DO have stairs. Big, tall, hardwood ones. With spindles to get caught in, slippery floors to lose traction on, and hard surfaces to pack the punch.

So how do we keep an eye on ever-so-active Kate? And how did we keep an eye on Will before he was old enough to tackle them on his own? This is how: we communicate constantly, keeping tabs on who is watching which child where and providing updates when the situation starts to change. All the time clarifying and updating the who, what, and where.

Somehow, this didn’t happen so well this weekend.

See these stairs? Straight, long, tall, hard, and unyielding?Yup. What you’re now thinking is exactly what happened.

Kate fell down these stairs. From the top, or at least very very very close to it. It is a fall that could have killed her, should have seriously injured her, and in the very least must have decently hurt her. The thudding sound of her body going down these stairs is, without question, the worst sound I have ever heard.
I found her at the bottom, lying on her back, having just hit the bottom floor. Still in her hand were pieces of clothes (freshly washed and folded and placed among our suitcase upstairs) with others lying up and down the stairs around her. It was obvious that she had climbed the stairs alone, rummaged through the clothes, and chosen some to carry back down. Somewhere near the top, it all went very wrong.

I reached her so quickly that she hadn’t yet started to cry. She was in that moment of shock and surprise, the split second before you register pain. She let out the first cry after her eyes met mine. But, surprisingly, her cries did not last long — they were very short-lived, actually. She did have (has) a bruise on her forehead and red marks along the right side of her cheek, but nothing that looked truly serious. No blackout. No vomiting. No strange eye movement. No odd limb positions, pain while moving, or stiffness in walking. Nothing. After a minute of crying, pushing away bags of ice, and fussing over us looking at her head and eyes, she calmed down, pointed outside, and asked for “bubbles.”

It seemed like I was in worse shape… shaking, swallowing back bile, trying not to think about the sounds etched in my head and the pictures they painted. I have never been so afraid.

Some lessons:
— No matter who is watching, supposed to be watching, or assumed to be watching … everything is always on my watch. I am having a much harder time being around while others keep an eye on her and am definitely more nervous over her.
— Kate’s head is a diamond. Nothing is harder.
— Kate will make an excellent addition to the NFL or NHL.
— Kate does not learn well from accidents. The very next day, I stopped packing in a moment of dread and rushed to the stairs on instinct… and found her halfway up the stairs.

To my children: please, let this be the last of your near-death experiences. It’s too much for your poor Mother to bear.

Kate had heatstroke from the Oak Street party we attended Saturday afternoon. She fell asleep in the car on the way home and when I took her out of the seat, noticed how incredibly hot she was… without any sign of sweat. I freaked out in the appropriate manner, woke her to nurse, and applied cool cloths. Once her temp was controlled and she was happy torturing Will with sloppy zerbers, I figured it was all behind us.

Until it happen again an hour later. Repeat performance.

And then again, when I checked on her at 1:30am. This was the point that I woke up Paul to worry with me.

“Paul, can you check the web for what symptoms we should be looking for when a child has meningitis? Look up heatstroke, too, maybe it is normal for her temp to keep coming back? She’s making wet diapers and is nursing fine, so shouldn’t her body temperature be okay now that she is hydrated? Yes, her eyes still look a bit sunken. Should we take her to Children’s just in case? Maybe we should put her back in the shower again. I’m very worried because her temperature is so strange and seems so high. Can you look it up and tell me what you think?”

While he was looking, I feel asleep with Kate nursing beside me. When I woke up with the alarm at 4:30, Kate was fine, sleeping soundly beside me. We got up and got ready for the trip.

Crisis averted due to Mother’s extreme exhaustion.