TheMommyBlog

Sunday, February 10, 2008 Bad Mood Dude, Family

My ex took the kids for the night so that I could rest and get over what I hope to be the last of this cold. I know it’s gone bacterial, but saltwater gargling and a little rain dancing have kept it down to a dull roar, which is nice because I really don’t want to see a doctor as I STILL DON’T HAVE INSURANCE. I’ll stop shouting that when they stop fucking up my coverage.

Anyway, I’ve been tracking fevers in my two youngest; diagnosed a double ear infection for Daphne, and just fever and cold for Dylan. However, Dylan’s fever went up, not down, over the weekend and when his dad came to get him he wanted to stay with me so that we could watch over each other. It was so sweet; he was worried about me and I was worried about him. He went anyway and I promised to stop by to give Daphne her antibiotics and to check on him.

Of all the children, Dylan has had the most surgeries, the most serious illnesses, and the most bizarre conditions. He nearly died when I passed the Coxsackie virus to him in utero, but he didn’t develop the antibodies in time to be able to fight it himself because he was born within a day or so of my exposure at the day care. By the time he was a week old, he just didn’t feel right, so I took him to the ER, and a good thing, too because he was in heart failure and stopped breathing a few hours later. Seventeen days of Level Four care in the NICU at Stanford, that’ll be two hundred fifty thousand dollars, please. He couldn’t just get a blister on his tongue like his brother did when he had it the year before.

And then there was the time he popped three hernias on Thanksgiving Day 2002: two inguinals and a rare Spigelian about two inches off to the right of his navel, too far to be umbilical. I pushed it back in with my fingers and scheduled surgery.

I’ve got a gut for his gut.

So when I walked into my ex’s house tonight they were eating dinner in front of a movie on the floor with huge piles of salmon skin all over the place. If you’re new here, you may not know that I have a thing about salmon. Which is exacerbated greatly by the smell of salmon skin. I nearly lost it, which is about the funniest thing ever to my kids. It’s their favorite food, and I never cook it for them. Keep laughing, smart guys.

While their dad took plates away so I wouldn’t have to smell them, I sat down for a minute to watch The Simpsons Movie. And I kept looking at Dylan. Finally I said, “Dylan has a fever, and there’s something wrong with him.” He coughed and said that his hip still hurt, just as it hurt this morning when he crawled into bed with me. So I gave him some Motrin and had him stand so I could check his lymph nodes.

Oh, it was all kinds of funny—he laughed so hard he farted—because I had to shimmy his shorts down his hips to see. As I walked my fingers down the trail of nodes leading to his groin, I said, “Uh, Dylan, these are HUGE. Does it hurt when I press on them?” As I let go he said, yes it hurt, and I said, “Okay, well, there’s a whole lot of fighting going on in your immune system, and it’s all in one place. If it keeps hurting, we need to think about appendicitis.” At this my ex looked up. “Well, it’s right there, it feels wrong, he’s got fever, it could be appendicitis. You can leave him with me in the morning. He shouldn’t go to school.”

I wasn’t home fifteen minutes when my ex emailed to say, “You’re so right. Dylan totally has a knot right at McBurney’s point (thank you Wikipedia). I’ll see if the pain occurs more on the release of the pressure rather than the pressure itself (thank you again Wikipedia).”

There you go! This was my favorite part of the Wikipedia entry: “Tenderness at McBurney’s point suggests the evolution of acute appendicitis to a later stage, and thus, the increased likelihood of rupture.” Jiminy. We tried to get more specifics out of Dylan, but at that point the Motrin had kicked in and he was half asleep.

I’ll check him in the morning. If I can sleep, that is.