Slack’s Place

A real-time account of life among the Earthlings…

Christ, We’re Sick.

by Slack, on February 4th, 2008

Ok… It started early last week… Rhys started having bad asthma attacks at school when playing. When you see a 4 year old stop in his tracks and brace himself on a bench, you tend to think something’s wrong. So, then he would vomit. You know because that’s what happens when you have a bad asthma attack. Only he was vomiting foamy shit… Of course we thought, yay, pneumonia.

Heidi takes him to the doctor to get checked out and they tell us he has a sinus infection. Lungs sound fine though so that’s good, but the drainage is making him miserable. He still hasn’t mastered the art of blowing his nose. On top of all this, I’m sick at the same time. Same symptoms. My head feels like someone pumped it full of jello, and my hearing is like my head has been sealed in a tin can. No biggie. I’m still going to work at this point.

So, Friday rolls around. We find out that Heidi’s step-mom coded in the hospital and is probably going to die. The family of course is in a dither. Half because they feed on drama, and half because, well, someone is dying… I’m thinking at this point, let’s just make it to the fucking weekend.

YAY! It’s the weekend! We’ll get to recharge a bit. Rhys man is on his antibiotics, I don’t have to deal with work or anything like that, and Heidi will have a fraction more help with me around… It’s too bad I cramp her style considerably more than a fraction in return, but that’s the way it goes… I love you, honey!! :)

Everything is going well, and we are all getting ready for bed. The plan is we will all hunker down in our huge bed, Rhys and I can share the heating blanket, and we can just vege out and watch something on the idiot box. Time to drift off to sleep.

Rhys then starts writing around and moaning. We feel bad of course, because well, he’s sick. There’s no consoling him at this point, so we start worrying. He’s poking at his ears and telling us it hurts. He has a headache, and of course he’s also giving us the classic answer of “I don’t know” when probed to find out what’s ailing him.

After trying to get him feeling better with no success, we decide to take him to the ER.. Since, you know, it’s 2300 and no Urgent Care centers are open. Soon as we get in the car to go, he stops writhing… So of course we start questioning the severity of his condition. I don’t know about your ER, but the ERs here are filled with freakiest members of society. Especially, at this hour… After we drive a long time and he is still not moaning and writhing, we decide it would be better to wait it out and hit up the Urcgent Care in the morning.

Once we get home, he starts writhing around again and of course there is no consoling him. So, it’s now 0200 and we decide fuck it, we need to get him seen right away. Load up in the car and head out. Once again, he stops writhing once he’s seated and we’re driving. This time we decide to ignore it and get him seen.

We get to the ER. It’s 0200 on a Saturday night… Or Sunday Morning… Whatever. We walk into the ER. I see the lobby, and there’s maybe like 6 people in there. Of course I thought “ok, this isn’t so bad.”. We sign in and decide to sit down to wait. It was then that I noticed, the ER was made of three rooms. The Lobby and two other rooms off of that. All of them are waiting rooms. Hey! Look! All the other rooms are filled with sick people. The orchestra of sickness in this place is about to drive me mad.

There’s the girl there with her boyfriend. She appears to be fine. As we sit down, she is getting up and verbally assaults her man . Something about her blood pressure being fine, and “CAN WE JUST GO HOME NOW!?”

Off in the other corner is some chick with her man. Her man is laying prone on the couch. Covered with one of those oh so comfortable hospital blankets, and a spit basin on the floor next to him. Crumpled up next to that is what appears to be blood soaked tissue paper.

It was then we decided to go home and wait it out.

Now it’s Sunday and Heidi took Rhys to Urgent Care. Turns out he has a sinus infection, and an ear infection. So, they give him some new antibiotics because obviously the other one isn’t working. Of course, he has trouble keeping the antibiotics down. He also has another medication for the pain in his ear. Eardrops. He handles that med just fine. Unfortunately, this med is just for the pain, and not at all for healing. The healing medication has ended up all over the carpet mixed with half digested rice and butter every time he’s taken in.

We talk to his doctor and we find out Rhys also has a stomach bug too… So, that coupled with the utter nastiness of the medication will keep him from getting better quickly.

So, here we are. Monday. Heidi and I are running on probably 7 hours of sleep for the entire weekend. We’ve both called in to work, her for the entire week, and me for just today. Though I will be calling in tomorrow too. Rhys’ ears are driving him insane, and he can’t take the meds that will make him better. My ears are driving me crazy, I’m too dizzy to think (this post has taken about 4 hours to make), and I need sleep. Heidi thankfully is not yet sick, and is still hanging in there.

… Oh, and as if the world isn’t weird enough… It’s snowing at Rhys’ school!?