Green About the Gills

I’m so sorry about the delay in posting this week’s blog, and out of exhaustion, this episode will be of a more somber nature than usual. We have had a nightmare of a time. Our little three year old, Lanes, woke up on Thursday night and began throwing up. I don’t know how it is possible, but she might have put out more than she weighs.

She stopped temporarily around 1am, when she fell asleep due to overtiredness, but I was so scared she would choke on her vomit if she threw up in her sleep that I stayed up, watching her like an overly possessive mother hawk.

P had had a breakthrough interview in the morning and he was coughing up a storm, so I advised him to catch up on some sleep. Being awake and having the reflexes of a cat, if I do say so myself, helped because Lanes woke up at 4am and hurled and I caught it just in time. Later P would laugh at how I dive with the chuck bucket in like a goalee at even the hint of a cough. Lanes soon fell back asleep but was back at it at 7am.

In Canada, there is a nurse line that one can call any time of the day. The clinic we go to was not open yet so we called in for some advice. It was helpful, but since Lanes was starting to burn up, we gave her the Pedialyte/Gatorade recommended by the nurse and then rushed her to the clinic. Poor Lanes was diagnosed with a stomach virus.

We were told to keep giving her Pedialyte/Gatorade and take her to the ER at the Children’s Hospital if she doesn’t urinate. Meanwhile, P missed his interview. It was a cruel blow to miss out on something we have been waiting so long for, but we were so worried about Lanes that in the grand scheme of things, it didn’t matter. At least not yet.

Well, long story short, at 9pm we were rushing to the ER. There were loads of other anxious looking parents with sick children and the waiting time was four to five hours for a doctor. I was amazed at how calm everyone was. The parents were hugging or soothing their children and not one of them complained about the wait. I guess that’s the way things are done here in Canada.

Lanes curled up against P and slept due to fatigue/possible dehydration, which turned out to be merciful since it would have been hard to keep her entertained or soothed for such a long time. While we were waiting, we were mesmerized by a little girl running around the ER, full of beans. She reminded us of a healthy Lanes.

I wound up speaking to her very worn out looking father, and it turns out the little girl had dislocated her shoulder. She was only 2 ½ and she was waiting four hours for someone to pop it in. Her dad said that it’s only a five minute job, but he had been waiting so long for a doctor to help him. He said that he was told he had to come to this particular hospital. Nowhere else in British Columbia could he get help for his daughter. I hope this is not true.

Despair was swelling up in me, tears were pushing up against my eyes, and at that point I felt ready to explode because two nights of not sleeping was literally making me shake with exhaustion, but when I saw how good natured he was about it and how cheerful his daughter was considering her situation, I took a deep breath and decided to suck it up. I even caught myself saying a prayer that his child would be tended to soon. I didn’t know I had it in me.

We finally got to see a doctor around 3am. Lanes was hating the orange flavored Peidalyte they wanted her to consume. If she didn’t drink it, they would have had to put her on an IV, which was something we really wanted to avoid. Since she wasn’t taking it by a straw or straight up from the cup, we were given a syringe to force feed her.

In the end, we told her my father keeps a syringe in his office and drinks his tea from that. So in the middle of the ER, we were making fun of my poor father and sticking several doses of Pedialyte into her before she went in for her check up, and it was just enough for her to escape the drip. We got home at 4am and we were emotionally and physically drained. P and I were also slightly nauseous since we had not eaten dinner.

That was two nights ago and we are still exhausted. Although the throwing up seems to have stopped, the diarrhea and stomach cramps continue. P has been an exceptional father during this time and he was stuck on Lanes like glue. He wouldn’t eat or move from her side, and I was really impressed with him. It was a little bit of a scary time, and we were both glad P could be home for all our sakes.

Lanes, now that she is slightly feeling better, is completely milking it, adoringly saying ‘Daddy, will you play with me?’ and locking him up in her room. She didn’t go to school today, and I was thankful she was having a Daddy fixation because it gave me time to scrub down the apartment.  When I tried to join them, I was told that she is in her office and that I had to come back later. I guess three is a crowd.

I was slightly hurt that I couldn’t join in. It was good to see her coming back to life slowly but surely. It’s been a quiet weekend. No funny comments about Mamma. No laughter. No dancing. No singing. It was terrible. It was like Lanes had gone away for the weekend but left her shadow behind.

Last night she slept through the night for the first time. However, we were still not destined to catch some sleep. P was starting to feel under the weather himself. I was finishing up some stuff in the kitchen and then I heard him calling me in the tone he reserves for a crisis.

I rushed over thinking Lanes had become ill again, but when I saw P standing at the door with the fingers on his right hand outstretched tightly, I knew it was not about Lanes but because there was an uninvited creature in the apartment.  Turns out a bee was trapped in our bedroom.

Since I am the official catcher of all critters, excluding roaches, I was left to figure out how to get rid of a bee, that quite possibly could be agitated due to disorientation. He was also very close to a slumbering Lanes.

The bee wouldn’t leave my bedside table lamp so we had to dangle the lamp outside our window and seal the sides of the window with paper. We had to leave the lamp on while we were sealing the window since the bee was attracted to the light, so I shudder to think what passersby would have thought of us.

They must have wondered what kind of lunatics are shining lights from their apartments. Worse yet, what if the fire department was on one of their routine checks? Maybe they would have rescued us from the bee. After the window was securely sealed, we left the lamp suspended outside our bedroom (with the light turned off by then).

So from 11pm to 7am, anyone coming to and from the apartment complex would have thought we were raving lunatics to sleep with a lamp halfway out our window. Hopefully they would think we were crazy college students. At that point we were so exhausted and psyched out by the encounter with the bee, that we didn’t really care.

So sorry this entry is lacking in it’s usual humor. I’m really pooped. Perhaps that is a bad choice of words considering out situation. P was coughing up a storm, and to add to it his stomach has been running for the past couple of hours. Lanes is still complaining of stomach pains and she is varying from playing to looking pitiful. I hope next week will be way more cheerful…