Greetings, Bloglings! I’m here today to write updates on everythang that’s been going on round here.
Update #1: My last post was with regards to Vev and the dilemma of whether or not to upgrade him from his Young Toddler daycare classroom to the next level up, which is called Prep. Happily, my fab cousin Neets answered me with a resoundingly optimistic message about moving him up, and letting him cultivate the intellectual and social benefits without fear. So that’s what we’re doing. Stay tuned for more updates about his progress!
Update #2: The semester is over! Hang on, let me rephrase that with the pomp and celebration that is truly due to this announcement...
The semester that will forever live in infamy as “that time I went back to work with a 3 week old baby, taught two new preps to nearly 40 students, endured a 2-ish hour round-trip work commute while pumping breastmilk in both directions, and generally nearly lost my mind” - - is OVEROVEROVER OOO-VAR!
Update #3: Of course, the semester couldn’t just end in a nice, easy way. It had to end with total drama and mayhem. On the Tuesday of exam week - i.e. grading frenzy week (so, April 28th) Vev woke up with a fever. Okay, it happens - no reason to panic, right? I kept him home from school that day with Nanny S, and figured he must have been coming down with a little cold or something.
When I returned from home that evening, he was still warm to the touch, and mostly behaving normal - except for one little thing. He periodically would touch his cheek, poke his tongue out a little, get this strange look in his eyes, then quietly say, “Is your mouth hurting?” Again, the boy phrases every statement in the form of a question, and he has pronoun issues - so this phrase translates in normal-speak to “My mouth is hurting.”
I asked him to open his mouth so I could take a look inside - maybe he had bitten the inside of his cheek? Maybe a piece of food was stuck between his teeth? Couldn’t see anything though, and after the first two or three times of asking him to open up so I could see, he decided he didn’t like it anymore so he stopped complying.
Fast-forward a matter of hours, once Nanny S had left for the day and I was all alone with him: his mouth suddenly broke out in a ton of painful-looking blisters, and Vev was screaming in agony and throwing a fit on the floor. His fever was up, he was inconsolable, and worst of all - he wouldn’t eat or drink ANYTHING. Even getting him to take tylenol for the fever and pain was impossible.
This situation would end up continuing for another FIVE DAYS. Of course there was a pediatrician appointment somewhere in the middle, OF COURSE the day before my very last class, where we got the diagnosis:
Herpangina. It’s kind of like a childhood illness known as hand-foot-mouth disease, where the kid gets a bad fever and breaks out in little bumps all over their (guess) - hands, feet and mouth. And throat - it gives you a horrendous sore throat. It is highly contagious, makes its way around daycares like wildfire.
For nearly five days, Vev refused to open his mouth for checks, and practically refused to eat or drink. His diet in these five days consisted of LOTS of ice chips, and little else. Despite my valiant efforts to find foods that were comfortable for his mouth and tempting - popsicles, pureed foods, pudding, ice cream, etc. - he hardly ate a bite. I ended up having to force-feed him some milkshakes using a large-gauge syringe with the needle pulled off - a trick from my days of helping with kitty Deeja’s palliative care. I’d wrap V in a towel like a burrito, bear-hug him with my left arm and whole body weight, while prying his lips/back molars open with the blunt end of the syringe and squeezing some milkshake in. He would thrash, scream, flail around, clench his jaw shut, etc. and it was a total cluster with arms and legs flying everywhere, screaming, bruises on me from his kicks, and of course - milkshake raining down all around us. I know there are parents out there who have to provide all kinds of invasive care and medical support to their kids on a daily basis - SALUTE to you all. I don’t know how you do it. Because this was a cluster.
Dr. Spouse, of course, was working his typical long, unending hours throughout this, so I was mostly on my own to handle this situation while also caring for and breastfeeding Dey.
Finally, by about Saturday, Vev was slowly turning a little corner. The fevers were down, thank goodness, and he was still being temperamental about eating, but would occasionally pick a food item and voluntarily put it in his mouth. By this point, he had easily lost a few pounds, his eyes were looking a little sunken, and his cheeks a little hollow. I didn’t really sweat it - knew he mostly had lost some water weight thanks to not drinking enough fluids and staying hydrated, and that the nearly total fasting of 5 days would give him a fatigued look -but that a few days of decent eating would rectify things. But still. It was hard to see him looking weak and underfed like that.
Then, Sunday rolled around. Vev was looking okay, and I was feeling relieved . . . till, Dey started fussing at me. And fussing. And fussing. For some reason, he didn’t seem to want to get a good latch while nursing - strange problem, because he’s usually all about the boob. And . . . . oh god, poking his tongue out. And - ugh, hmm, why was I suddenly feeling so crappy? And was it hot in here? And - hmm, why did my tongue feel funny??
Yup. Both Dey and I caught the virus from Vev.
Cue panic mode. I seriously lost all ability to think calmly. The prospect of having to care for a tiny infant as he struggled, screamed, and refused to eat for nearly five days terrified me. I just KNEW, in my bones, that if Dey’s experience was anything like Vev’s and if he refused to drink milk for a few days, we’d have to admit him in the hospital. Four-month old, fourteen pound breastfed babies are supposed to, well, breastfeed - and when they don’t do that, bad things happen. Even under normal circumstances this would be bad - but I just knew I was getting sick myself. What if my own illness made it hard for me to care for the kids? I got a chance to experience it for a few hours on Sunday night, into Monday morning, as Dey continued to wail and wail, refusing to take either bottle or breast, and struggling as much as his tiny body could to escape my grasp as I pipetted expressed breast milk into the corner of his mouth with a medicine dropper. This was awful, awful, awful.
So I did it. I did the thing that I have NEVER done before, in two years of parenthood - the thing that for some reason always makes me feel kind of sheepish and inept and incapable, even though it shouldn’t.
Sitting up in bed before dawn, laptop in front of me, hungry and sick baby passed out in the crook of my left arm, I swallowed my pride and picked up the phone. I called my mom at 5:30 am on Monday morning, and told her what was going on . . . and that I’d booked her a flight ticket on a 9:30 flight, and did she think she could make it to the airport in time to get on the plane.
She hesitated for approximately ZERO seconds, before calmly saying “Okay, no problem. I’m up, my bag is out, and I’m throwing some clothes in. I’ll see you at the airport at 11:30 when I land.” Yes. I am a lucky person.
By the time Ajima would land in Ft. Lauderdale hours later, my hands and feet would be entirely covered in spots, and my mouth and throat were on fire. Fortunately Vev by now was back to normal energy and spirits, and (in fact) driving the sick members of the house crazy with his antics and pent-up energy from being cooped up at home for a week. The pediatrician had told us that the minute he was no longer febrile, he wasn’t contagious and could return to school - so I loaded him up and dropped him off at daycare, and had Nanny S had come in to help with Dey. My head was spinning with images from the morning - obviously, I hadn’t slept a wink, and then the early hours of the day had been spent in a desperate vortex of trying to get Dey to drink some milk. He was so frustrated and ravenous, and yet the pain in his mouth/throat seemed to be great enough that he wouldn’t swallow anything. Milk just kept dribbling out his mouth and down his neck, and he’d cry.
I was so frustrated, I wanted to run away from home - possibly to check myself into the loony bin. I thought I would just lose my mind. Nanny S was calm and patient though - wouldn’t give up, and came up with this idea to feed him drops of milk at a time with a shallow spoon - talked about back home in Trinidad, how she and her siblings as children used to nurse sick baby goats and sheep on their farm back to health this way. I was awed by her ability to stay unruffled. And sure enough, like a tiny kitten, Dey started to gingerly lap up some milk from the spoon with his pink, inflamed tongue.
So confident was I in her handling of the situation with Dey, that I took off to collect Ajima from the airport - spots and all. As we drove home, I was letting her know our plan, that if Dey didn’t wet enough diapers in the next few hours, we’d have to go get him checked out at the ER. The pedi’s rule had been 5 diapers in 24 hours, and he’d only wet about 2 in the last 16.
By the time I got home from this journey of only 1 hour, Dey had wet 4 diapers! And he’d go on to wet another 4 before the 24-hour mark was up. How on earth he did that, I have no idea! There were hardly any fluids going in! Oh well. He remained kind of limp and sickly looking, passed out on Nanny S’s shoulder, for about a half hour upon my return with Ajima - - and then, MURPHY’S LAW. After awaking from his nap and seeing Ajima there, he broke out into one of his classic grins - and immediately started drinking milk from a bottle she offered him.
“Hey, look! He’s not that bad. He’s taking this bottle, isn’t he?”
Wow, kid. Way to make me feel like a world class IDIOT.
Just kidding. I’m just glad he decided to get it together and eat, after over a day.
He quickly broke out into his own collection of leopard spots, just like me - the two of us matched quite nicely. But fortunately, the “hunger strike” phase of his illness didn’t last the same 5-day stretch that Vev’s had. Nanny S took this opportunity to go collect Vev from daycare, and of course he walked into the house, saw Ajima there, and promptly lost his mind - running around screaming gleefully, excited beyond measure, and demanding that “Ajima play with you!” every five minutes.
So Ajima ended up staying a week thanks to this plague and the unplanned SOS trip to help us out. Nearly 3 weeks later, I am still somewhat recovering from the lesions on my throat - but the kids are both 100% better.
With things returning to normal, I set to the task that had taken a huge backseat to illness and child-rearing - - grading the 97 papers and final exams on my desk before the grade submission deadline. Thanks to all these distractions, I was now WAY behind where I was supposed to be. So even as I was nursing popsicles and soups to calm my burning mouth, I was grading furiously. I was able to muster things together and submit in time . . . a cool 9 minutes under the deadline on Monday.
I don’t mean for all of this to sound like a pity party - - but I kind of feel like I deserve a vacation. Or at least, a pedicure. Spa pedicure? Maybe I’ll go do that today :)
