Mostly, it's the Books

And the internet, or lack of it. A few weeks ago, something went wonky with our wi-fi, and I had no internet for several days. At first I panicked. No internet? What was I to do?

The house suddenly got cleaner, the food more elaborate (except for the recipes I always pull off the 'net), and I started reading again. Then, I got hooked on books and it was back to toys everywhere and fishsticks for dinner. I still didn't get back online, for the most part. It's been a long time since I've read like that, but in the past few weeks, I've read several excellent books: The Girl With the Dragon Tatoo, Child 44, and The Likeness.

On Tuesday night, I got home from a coffee at 10pm, and Kate was crying. She hurt her elbow while wrestling earlier in the evening, and she had just woken up because it still hurt. I tried sleeping next to her, but she couldn't fall back asleep for more than a few minutes before waking up again crying. So, at 11pm, we went to the ER. Along with everyone else. She had 3 x-rays, to rule out broken bones, and when the PA saw us around 2:30am, he confirmed nursemaid's elbow, which is the radius dislocating from the socket. Kate has likely had this several times before, but it has always fixed itself. This time it didn't and we had to get a doctor's help. He showed me how to fix it, so that if it happens again, I can hopefully pop it back in at home.

So this week has been sort of wacky, with lack of sleep and trying to get back to a general feeling of liveliness. Tim's family arrived last night for the next week or so, and we look forward to spending some time with his parents next week, after they are done with the class they are taking.

I can't promise that I will be writing again in the next few days, but it could happen. Except I just got The Girl Who Played With Fire, so . . .

I guess it could have been worse?

We were planning to go to Tucson for spring break, but then my sister and her daughter got pink-eye, and we reevaluated. Going to San Diego to see my dad seemed like a good option. I certainly didn't want to hang around Las Vegas by myself with the children out of school for a week. Then Kate got a fever last Wednesday. She recovered for the most part by Thursday, so I decided we were going to push to California. On the drive out, things got challenging. I had rearranged the car so that the girls were sitting next to each other in the back row, in order for them to entertain each other. Who knew that by "entertaining" they meant fighting? I guess I should have seen that coming. Just south of Vegas, I pulled over on a dirt road and tossed bags and car seats out of the car gently suggested a new seating arrangement. I put Kate next to Luke in the second row, which also turned out to be a mistake. She refused to leave him alone. At one point AC/DC's 'Highway to Hell' came on the radio and I mused about its timeliness.

Almost 6 hours after we left, we arrived at my dad's. Luke had started coughing a couple of hours into the drive, and by Friday night, he sounded awful. I must have been up every hour that night, helping him get back to sleep. Sometime in the middle of the night, his cough turned into barking, followed by a slight wheezing. This completely freaked me out, and I don't know if I slept much after that. He wasn't better by the morning, so I told my dad we needed to take him to the doctor.

My dad got online and found a clinic to go to. It was on the way to the beach - perfect! He called, and told them we were on Tri-Care, and the woman mentioned that there was a Tri-Care outpatient facility nearby. Great! We headed there instead. Turns out it was like a Tri-Care office off base, and they would only see you if you were a patient there. The woman gave me directions to a different place for us to go. I asked her if it was an ER (I absolutely detest going to the ER; in fact, it is probably the number one thing I hate to do), and she said no. I asked if it was on an installation. She said no, and also that she wasn't from San Diego. Um? I should have taken this to mean that she didn't know what she was talking about. We wound our way closer to downtown....and ended up at a military gate. We should have turned around right there. But, not knowing where else to go, we parked and walked into the hospital. It turns out we were at the US Naval Medical Center, San Diego, a large concrete structure full of sickies. We checked in, and I asked how long they thought the wait would be. No idea. Awesome. I think it took about 20 minutes to get into triage. And another 4 hours to be seen. So there we were, all in our beach garb, Simone with a migraine, three sick and crabby kids, on vacation. Luke has croup, and ear infections in both ears. They gave him some liquid steroids and amoxicillin, and he is finally sounding a lot better. Now Claire sounds bad.

Ready for his chest x-ray.

On Sunday we finally made it to the beach. For an hour. Luke and Claire were still not feeling great, and Luke cried for most of the time we were there. He was interested in the sand for a bit, though, until he rubbed some of it in his eyes. Claire went down to the water once, but the wind combined with the cold water made her head right back to the warmth of the beach towel.

Mama, this bath is cold. Also, my ears hurt.

I'm supposed to do what with the sand?

Kate loved the beach. LOVED. She giggled with delight as the water rushed up to her feet, sucking the sand out from under her toes. "Mom! The beach is moving!" She ran back and forth, into the water and out again. She splashed, made friends, gathered shells, and giggled some more. I felt bad tearing her away from the water, but Luke was a crying wreck.

On Sunday afternoon, I made the command decision to head home on Monday, earlier than we had planned. We got home at 6pm and Claire went straight to bed, in her clothes and without dinner. This from my little night owl who likes to stay up until 9 or 10pm. Kate and Luke were also asleep by 8pm. Today we have an appointment for Claire to see what sort of illness she is harboring.

In all, I am glad we went. It was a good diversion for all of us, even though it was painful. Here we would have been sick and bored. And it somehow gave me a confidence I haven't had in awhile: I can do pretty much anything alone, if necessary. I would prefer to have Tim here, but we do okay when he's gone.

Doctors, Doctors, Doctors

We have had enough trips to doctor's offices and hospitals in the past week than I would care to have in a year. Kate is now much better, although they still aren't sure what is wrong with her. Her fever is gone, but she has a 'borderline' UTI. The base doc switched medicines for her after her appointment there yesterday, and she woke up with a rash. Back to the doctor's again today for her.

I had my 37 week OB appointment yesterday and everything seemed fine except the baby wasn't moving much. So he sent me home to do some kick counts and told me to go to the hospital if she didn't move 10 times in 2 hours. She moved 3 times. To the hospital I went. This was the same time as Kate's doctor's appointment on base, so I drove myself to the hospital, and my sister met me there. They hooked me up to the monitors for about 2 hours, finally determining that she seemed fine and that I could go home.

We are all exhausted and tired of flourescent lights. Tim has been so helpful throughout this; I don't know how single moms do it. Kudos, Buji!

Since we've spent so much time visiting with hospital staff lately, there really hasn't been much else going on to report about. I did have a lovely time on Saturday with some friends who got together with me for lunch to celebrate the new baby - thank you all for coming! It is great to be surrounded by such a good group of people.

Trauma

What do you call 4+ hours spent in the ER on Saturday night/early Sunday morning, holding your toddler who has a fever of 104.4, trying to get her to sleep in your arms under the horrendous flourescent lights that only an ER can have, holding her down while they do chest x-rays, stick her with IV needles and draw blood for tests, repeatedly take her temperature (the fun way because they can't find an ear thermometer), tape a piddle pack on her to collect urine but later cathetize her twice because they need to do a urinalysis? I call it trauma, for us and for Kate, and it's how we spent last night. I had to leave the room for most of the procedures because I was too much of a wreck listening to her cry. It's a terrible, heart-wrenching thing to hear your baby scream 'mama' and 'bye-bye' while hospital staff try to 'help' her.

Kate came down with a fever sometime on Friday, but seemed to get better for a bit on Saturday. Then her fever spiked and TriCare sent us to the ER. Kate's getting better, we think, but she still has a fever and isn't quite right. This time she is able to keep food and liquid down, but she's hardly eating anything besides milk. They still don't know what is wrong with her, even with all those stupid tests, but they think it might be a UTI. We'll find out in a couple of days.

Hope y'all had a better weekend.