This morning I had to go to the middle school to pick up items from Gus's locker. The school had cleaned out every child's locker and parents were asked to do a pickup while they returned other items such as band uniforms. Parents were instructed to stay in their cars, make a sign with their kids' name and tape it to the window, roll down windows to exchange but don't make contact, etc. Very well organized.
I fought tears the whole time. Everything outside of the house makes me cry these days. All these safety protocols in the grocery store. They set off this urge to wail like a frightened child. Of course I don't. I don't show a single reaction whatsoever--but deep inside I'm totally panicked. So, seeing the school principal and secretary (6 years of kids in this building and I know them well) in masks and gloves and I just wanted to break down and weep. It's so scary and real in ways that a media website's charts and graphics just can't be.
All that emotion during a 3 minute trip around the drop off lane at the middle school. Gah. I needed an hour putsying in my yard playing in my garden to recover.
Then there was more than the usual stress at work. Hard emails to send to students and parents. Difficult decisions with IEPs at the end of the year. Just the necessary but sad kinda stuff that has to be done.
Finally, it's 4:30 and my workday is done and I'm in the kitchen making shepherd's pie which is one of the few meals everyone loves and I'm happy to be cooking and my kitchen is clean and all is right with the world when I hear this SHRIEK from the dining room. Kate is screaming, "James, James, hep me, it hurts, get it out, hep me, hep me?!?" Kate and James have been mortal enemies all day so if she's begging him for help.... My god, I thought I'd come around the corner and see blood everywhere.
When I ran into the room yelling, "What's wrong?" she panicked further, stopped breathing altogether (her typical go-to response to stress), pointed at her mouth and silently mouthed, "ow, ow, ow" to me. Ye gods. I truly thought she'd swallowed some chemical and was dying right there.
I snatch her up and as I'm staring into her mouth I see an orange pony bead peaking out of her right nostril. I slide my thumb down the side of her nose and the bead pops out. Then I realize she'd gotten down the tub of pony beads (the big plastic multi-colored kind that slide easily onto pipe cleaners) without permission. At first I think of course there was only one up her nose and I got it out and phew. But she's still crying so hard and poking her finger up right left nostril. I calm her down and ask how many beads she put up there--realizing the deep importance of her being able to count. She says just two, one in each side.
I look and it is wedged way, way, way up there. Call in Seth and explain where I was mid-dinner. Get dressed (super annoyed I have to put a bra on; that's how comfortable I am with the shut down, bras are now a foreign apparatus). Clean Kate up a bit, and then head off to Urgent Care. The doc is clueless. She makes me do the thing where the parent blows in the kid's mouth which I just don't believe has ever worked, ever, no matter what they say. Then she tries using suction. Nope, she sends us off to the hospital ER. Can't wait to get not one, but two, emergency co-pay bills in a few weeks. Seems like they shouldn't be able to charge you if they can't help you.
I have face masks for both Kate and I that we've been wearing since we left the house. But I dread pulling up into that hospital parking ramp. I lecture Kate about not touching ANYTHING because hospitals are dirty places.
The ER is empty and they get us right thru to the Pediatric side. Immediately back into a room. Doc came in right away. Place was like a ghost town compared to other trips we've had to this same hospital with kids over the years.
They have a special tool and get it out eventually, but it took at least six tries and four people holding her. I laid across her legs, a nurse held her arms and head. Two docs doing the light and the tool. And she wailed and cried and called out for me and arched her whole body and fought constantly. She was a swollen, red-faced, traumatized little girl by the time it was over and I could get her into my arms.
And all I could think of was Jane. About a year ago Jane put a Barbie shoe up her nose. She did not speak or move while they took it out and that time the doc used a pair of tweezers and there was tons of blood. It had to hurt terribly and no one even had to hold her down. I offered to hold Jane's hand and she let me but it just lay there limply in my hand the whole time. Jane has very, very little response to pain. I know she feels it. She just doesn't react to it.
(Two weeks ago Jane showed me her hands one evening and said, "they won't move" with this puzzled tone. She couldn't bend her fingers. The skin was deep purple red, cracked in a thousand places, the worst case of eczema flare up she's ever had. It came from days of playing in the mud. It must've been terribly painful. Imagine a thousand paper cuts. I said, "does it hurt?" She thought and then said, like making a discovery, "yeah, they DO hurt." She didn't even register the pain until her skin was so tight it wouldn't even flex enough for her to bend her fingers. I just wanted to cry at how broken her sensory system and her awareness of her own body is. We began doing deep lotion treatments over several days and her skin healed but I still have to inspect her hands each evening and remind her to put lotion on them.)
So, when Kate cried I was probably the only mother who was happy to hear her child yelling. But anything is better than the deep creepiness of watching a child disassociate right before your eyes.
We got home and Seth had put the food in the oven, then walked away and let it burn over the next two hours. The house was reeking of it when I walked in. Seth and Gus and Theo all right there in the house and nobody smelling dinner turn to charcoal? Bullshit. I was so mad. Just spitting mad. Took out all the stress of the day on first Seth and then Gus when he wandered into the room. Yelled and yelled and yelled at both of them for all the ways they've failed to step up when we've needed them. But, seriously, you know your mom is at the hospital and you can't even take the damn dinner out of the oven? Bull. Shit. Sometimes, when someone totally loses it and blows up, it's because the one on the receiving end fully deserves it.
And thus ends my 12 hours of one intense and miserable experience after another. Today is my dad's birthday. He died 32 years ago when I was 13. This year I turn 45--the same age he was when he died. Gus is currently 13. If I live to the end of June this year I will have lived longer than he did. The older I get the more deeply I understand how young he was when he died and how much was stolen from him.
I fought tears the whole time. Everything outside of the house makes me cry these days. All these safety protocols in the grocery store. They set off this urge to wail like a frightened child. Of course I don't. I don't show a single reaction whatsoever--but deep inside I'm totally panicked. So, seeing the school principal and secretary (6 years of kids in this building and I know them well) in masks and gloves and I just wanted to break down and weep. It's so scary and real in ways that a media website's charts and graphics just can't be.
All that emotion during a 3 minute trip around the drop off lane at the middle school. Gah. I needed an hour putsying in my yard playing in my garden to recover.
Then there was more than the usual stress at work. Hard emails to send to students and parents. Difficult decisions with IEPs at the end of the year. Just the necessary but sad kinda stuff that has to be done.
Finally, it's 4:30 and my workday is done and I'm in the kitchen making shepherd's pie which is one of the few meals everyone loves and I'm happy to be cooking and my kitchen is clean and all is right with the world when I hear this SHRIEK from the dining room. Kate is screaming, "James, James, hep me, it hurts, get it out, hep me, hep me?!?" Kate and James have been mortal enemies all day so if she's begging him for help.... My god, I thought I'd come around the corner and see blood everywhere.
When I ran into the room yelling, "What's wrong?" she panicked further, stopped breathing altogether (her typical go-to response to stress), pointed at her mouth and silently mouthed, "ow, ow, ow" to me. Ye gods. I truly thought she'd swallowed some chemical and was dying right there.
I snatch her up and as I'm staring into her mouth I see an orange pony bead peaking out of her right nostril. I slide my thumb down the side of her nose and the bead pops out. Then I realize she'd gotten down the tub of pony beads (the big plastic multi-colored kind that slide easily onto pipe cleaners) without permission. At first I think of course there was only one up her nose and I got it out and phew. But she's still crying so hard and poking her finger up right left nostril. I calm her down and ask how many beads she put up there--realizing the deep importance of her being able to count. She says just two, one in each side.
I look and it is wedged way, way, way up there. Call in Seth and explain where I was mid-dinner. Get dressed (super annoyed I have to put a bra on; that's how comfortable I am with the shut down, bras are now a foreign apparatus). Clean Kate up a bit, and then head off to Urgent Care. The doc is clueless. She makes me do the thing where the parent blows in the kid's mouth which I just don't believe has ever worked, ever, no matter what they say. Then she tries using suction. Nope, she sends us off to the hospital ER. Can't wait to get not one, but two, emergency co-pay bills in a few weeks. Seems like they shouldn't be able to charge you if they can't help you.
I have face masks for both Kate and I that we've been wearing since we left the house. But I dread pulling up into that hospital parking ramp. I lecture Kate about not touching ANYTHING because hospitals are dirty places.
The ER is empty and they get us right thru to the Pediatric side. Immediately back into a room. Doc came in right away. Place was like a ghost town compared to other trips we've had to this same hospital with kids over the years.
They have a special tool and get it out eventually, but it took at least six tries and four people holding her. I laid across her legs, a nurse held her arms and head. Two docs doing the light and the tool. And she wailed and cried and called out for me and arched her whole body and fought constantly. She was a swollen, red-faced, traumatized little girl by the time it was over and I could get her into my arms.
And all I could think of was Jane. About a year ago Jane put a Barbie shoe up her nose. She did not speak or move while they took it out and that time the doc used a pair of tweezers and there was tons of blood. It had to hurt terribly and no one even had to hold her down. I offered to hold Jane's hand and she let me but it just lay there limply in my hand the whole time. Jane has very, very little response to pain. I know she feels it. She just doesn't react to it.
(Two weeks ago Jane showed me her hands one evening and said, "they won't move" with this puzzled tone. She couldn't bend her fingers. The skin was deep purple red, cracked in a thousand places, the worst case of eczema flare up she's ever had. It came from days of playing in the mud. It must've been terribly painful. Imagine a thousand paper cuts. I said, "does it hurt?" She thought and then said, like making a discovery, "yeah, they DO hurt." She didn't even register the pain until her skin was so tight it wouldn't even flex enough for her to bend her fingers. I just wanted to cry at how broken her sensory system and her awareness of her own body is. We began doing deep lotion treatments over several days and her skin healed but I still have to inspect her hands each evening and remind her to put lotion on them.)
So, when Kate cried I was probably the only mother who was happy to hear her child yelling. But anything is better than the deep creepiness of watching a child disassociate right before your eyes.
We got home and Seth had put the food in the oven, then walked away and let it burn over the next two hours. The house was reeking of it when I walked in. Seth and Gus and Theo all right there in the house and nobody smelling dinner turn to charcoal? Bullshit. I was so mad. Just spitting mad. Took out all the stress of the day on first Seth and then Gus when he wandered into the room. Yelled and yelled and yelled at both of them for all the ways they've failed to step up when we've needed them. But, seriously, you know your mom is at the hospital and you can't even take the damn dinner out of the oven? Bull. Shit. Sometimes, when someone totally loses it and blows up, it's because the one on the receiving end fully deserves it.
And thus ends my 12 hours of one intense and miserable experience after another. Today is my dad's birthday. He died 32 years ago when I was 13. This year I turn 45--the same age he was when he died. Gus is currently 13. If I live to the end of June this year I will have lived longer than he did. The older I get the more deeply I understand how young he was when he died and how much was stolen from him.
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