Quietness around Impotent Fury does not equal nothing going on, oh no. We split up, the Lad to the wilds of the west for a scintillating professional conference, whilst I decamped north with the snarklet to do the rounds of relatives interspersed with some holy shit good eats (I have a post I need to do- a tale of 3 dinners, including dinner at Graham Elliot and the first Farm Table dinner at Green Dirt Farms.) But all of that was preparatory to our big summer event this year.
Yes, yes Sean is sans tonsils now, thank you for asking. And why yes, yes I would appreciate a ginger margarita as big as my ever lovin head, aren’t you a dear.
Wednesday was D-day, and all of the honest talks, and lead up, and experiments with Sean safe popsicle flavors flew out the window when the wee man was confronted with the harsh medical reality of the pre-op area. In a word, he wigginsed. Dad summoned all of his parental mojo while I frenziedly signed all manners of paperwork attesting why yes, yes he really is allergic to all of that crap and yes we are aware that anasthesia could turn him into a goat or worse yet a dead goat or god forbid a dead goat registered as a Republican. Meanwhile, the small man wailed he did not want his tonsils out, “Please and thank you!”
The Ana strode up, surveyed the scene manfully, and smiled- smiled the smile of a man confident in his arsenal of Drugs That Make You Really Not Care. “How much does he weigh? 50 lbs? That’s 23, so we’ll just push him 12 of versed! That’ll calm him down!” he said airily to the nurse. At which point I looked at him and said in a tone somewhere between wicked and ‘please don’t make me rip your head off isn’t versed a little MUCH for the situation of a wigged out child?’ “Does it have dye in it? In which case, oh no you won’t.”
Have you ever seen a doctor look like a child at the circus who’s just spilled his popcorn and his balloon’s flown off at the same moment? I have now. “Oh.” He sighed, and slumped off to redo his entire medical plan. You know, because it’s not like we hadn’t alerted them beforehand about this little issue. 15 minutes later, when Sean was still huddled on the floor against the wall like Gollum, protesting feebly that “No I really really don’t want my tonsils out”, the nurse ana strode over with HIS kit, and chirped, “Versed?” and the entire chorus of nurses and me barked, “No dye!” He slumped off like a whipped puppy.
So it’s been fun. All manner of fun. Sean did in fact inherit both his father’s and my mother’s poor reactions to ana, and so he came out of it both wailing and thrashingkickinglogrollinggeenurseI’msosorryhekickedyouintheforehead. Poor Lad got the brunt of it, because Sean wanted to curl up on him (though, once he had shaken off the bulk of the ana, the nurse asked him if he wanted to lie on mom in the big medical recliner. “No.” he said, and then a beat later added, “I still love you mom.” Unspoken was the ‘despite you doing this to MEEEEEEEE’) for a good solid 3 hours, and I think he’s still regaining feeling in his extremities. He is pretty much refusing to eat or drink except for brief, 45 minute long periods in the evenings when he eats all manner of shit the books and doctors tell you a child recuperating from this won’t eat (blue cheese! salty french fries! bbq pork!). He has asked that when he can swallow nicely again can we have steak. He sounds like the horrible combination of Minnie Mouse with a bad sinus infection, Deputy Dog, and an Ewok.
But by far the worst of it was the day after. The evening of, he was remarkably fine- ate ice cream, ate popsicles, drank. But as the last of the goooood meds cleared his system overnight, and the swelling set in, that came to a halt. The Lad not only had to work, he had a business dinner Thurs, so I was truly flying solo. It was horrible. It was requiring every whit of parenting skill I had. And we had to go out at 4:45 to get the CSA pickup for the week. In desperation, I deployed The Bakugan Vol 2 dvd I’d bought for later in the week (Miss Tammy got him Bakugans for his birthday, as they involve MATH. Thanks, Tammy, thanks SO MUCH. FIRST HIT’S FREE, INNIT! DO YOU REALIZE THERE ARE LIKE 200 OF THESE THINGS?).
“Mom?” Sean asked in his Tiny Sad Voice
“Yeah babe?”
“Can we get some bakugan?”
“Honey, we’re not going anywhere other than to get the CSA pickup.”
“But with my money. Can I buy some Bakugan?”
“Um. I don’t know how much they are. And sweetie you really need to take it easy.”
Sean was quiet a minute, then trudged upstairs. He returned with a fistful of crumpled bills. “How many can I get with this?” he asked. “It’s 7. From the tooth fairy and grandma and grandpa.” He dropped some quarters. “And 75.” Even I, hardass that I am, was not about to make a less than 48 hours post op child buy his own damn toys. “I’ll look into how much they cost.” I said, and then I had a brainwave as I bundled him into the car for the CSA run. “You finish that cup of water, honey, and we’ll stop at Target SUPER QUICK and get you a bakugan.” “But how much do they cost,” he asked again in TSV. “I don’t know if I have enough.” “Don’t worry about it, sweetie.” I said, driving off, confident as could be. I had a happy child, who was drinking finally, he’d get a toy that would keep him occupied, this was the BEST PLAN EVAR.
Until I heard the noise. A strange, grinding, heaving noise.
The noise of splashing.
And then the crying. “Oh honey! Don’t cry! I bet the meds made your tummy unhappy!” I said, flinging kleenex back to him futilely, grabbing rhino out of the blast radius. “I’m not crying because I threw up!” Sean sobbed.
“I am crying because I am sad we can’t go to Target now!”
So if you were the nice, clean, pulled together suburban mom, with the 3 blonde children immaculately garbed, standing in the aisle with the transformers and the bakugan, I do apologize. And if you are wondering why my child sounded like a pathetic squeaky toy as he asked again and again if he had enough money for the bakugan I was blindly flinging into the cart and I was telling him I was not making him spend his tooth fairy money not to worry about it, and moreover why he smelled faintly like a sewage treatment plant, or moreover why he was wearing shorts so old and outgrown it looked like a Hotpants Ode To Farrah (which I had managed to find at the bottom of the Emergency Bag Of Stuff), please, let your imagination continue to run free. I assure you whatever Worst Mother of the Year Award you’ve dreamt up in your mind can’t begin to hold a candle to the reality of the fact that I have been grinding dye-free codeine pills with a mortar and pestle and making tinctures of them with vanilla coffee-flavouring syrup and administering it to my child like some sort of old-fashioned laudnum-pushing druggist. Nor for the fact that he feebly thanks me for it every time I drug him like an angry charging rhino.
