Domestic Psychology

again with the body fluids

// November 6th, 2009 // 2 Comments » // health, parenting

Wednesday, Amy had to visit the dentist for a small filling on one tooth and sealant on a molar. My job during this adventure was to be reassuring and stay out of the way. Amy hopped in the dental chair and they leaned the chair back to work on her mouth. The assistant pulled Amy’s shoulders and slid her until Amy’s tiny head rested squarely on the head cushion. This parked her bottom on the area of the chair designed to be a back rest and her legs magically floated over the fold in the chair where booties belong. An orange mask was gently draped over Amy’s nose and two assistants busily applying a sealant nearly blocked my view. I sat in my chair against the wall and watched what I could see, Amy’s feet.

Amy’s feet looked completely relaxed during the sealant procedure. Then, the dentist switched places with one of the assistants and I watched him pick up a metal syringe. Amy’s feet turned in and one went on top of the other. As quickly as Amy’s feet and my entire body tensed, it was done. Her feet relaxed. I sat in my chair on the wall and tried to look like I didn’t feel sick about what was happening. I closed my eyes for a count of ten and then I resumed my feet watching duties. I stared and the feet remained still.

The feet started tapping, like a little tune was playing in Amy’s head. I tried to decide if she was playing or restless. Then, her toes pointed straight down and I tried to make a motion that would get the assistant’s attention without distracting the dentist. When Amy’s hands grabbed her crotch, I made an announcement. “We need to go potty.” The dentist said he was finished and quietly asked Amy if she could wait a few minutes before she tried to sit up. Amy nodded. I began mentally abusing myself for saying “we” instead of “she” while wondering how long Amy could hold it.

The dentist left, the gas was switched to oxygen and I scooted in close to Amy’s face. “I need you to take big, deep breaths so you can get your land legs back.” Amy stared at me as she took exaggerated breaths. The assistant popped the mask off and I helped a very wobbly Amy to the bathroom. Amy did her thing and I lifted her up to the sink to wash her hands. Immediately, I felt the moisture seeping from the seat of Amy’s pants to the leg of my jeans where Amy sat to wash her hands. A few questions determined that by the time Amy grabbed her crotch in the chair, it was too late to make it to the bathroom. We left the office and made it to the car as quickly as possible.

The tears began almost immediately. Giant, Keane painting eyes silently dripped a steady stream of tears. I tried to convince Amy that the medications just made her too relaxed to hold it, but my words didn’t help. I knew that if we could get home and out of the soggy clothes, she could get past this. I just didn’t know how we were going to make it home. “Amy, if you don’t stop crying, I’m going to pee in my pants so you won’t feel alone.” “What?” “I’m going to pee in my pants. Right now. I’m going to do it. Hold on, I need to concentrate to do it.” Quiet giggles replaced the sniffles and sobs. “It’s too hard to pee while I’m driving. Should I pull over up here and pee in my pants?” “Moooommy. You’re silly.” I’m happy to report that I made it home with dry pants. However, Doug will be the foot watcher on the next visit to the dentist.

bad patient

// November 5th, 2009 // No Comments » // health, parenting

4:00 pm – Sarah enters the house, vomits and goes to bed. Her temperature is 101.

“I stayed up too late last night. I’ll be fine after a quick nap. I have to go to a football game tomorrow night.”

10:00 pm – After a six hour nap, Sarah’s temperature is 102.

“I think I just ate too much Halloween candy this week. I’ll be fine for the football game.”

I told Sarah that I have never heard of anyone running a fever from eating too much candy. Doug and I took turns trying to explain that she needs to be fever free for 24 hours before she is going anywhere.

“I won’t breathe on anyone at the game. It’ll be okay.”

if I don’t do it . . .

// November 2nd, 2009 // 5 Comments » // Doug, health, home

I spent Sunday with no voice, a hacking cough, stuffy nose and an assortment of aches and pains. The cough medicine made me feel like I was sleepwalking in a fog, but it didn’t help reduce the coughing. I swallowed Tylenol just before a coughing fit and one of the pills shot back out. I didn’t know that was even possible.

Doug looked up from his day long Roomba repair and told me to go back to bed. I looked at him through my eyebrows. “Everything will be fine up here. I’ll even wash the dishes.” I sat in a chair and folded clothes in slow motion until I accidentally fell asleep in the chair. I went downstairs. At some point, Evan came down to watch SpongeBob in my room. I woke up freezing and went upstairs to turn up the heat. The heat was off and all the windows were open. I think that I sat and wept until the children closed the windows. I don’t remember.

This morning, I expected a bit of a mess. My family exceeded my expectations. Based on the LAYERS of dirty dishes, all of the bowls and spoons were used at breakfast. Lunch required every single dish and afternoon snacks were eaten from serving dishes. Dinner was improvised with cake pans for plates. It looks like there was some kind of spaghetti battle. The squished pasta in the dogs’ fur must mean that they lost. The only possible explanation for every single cup and glass being used is that my family delicately took no more than a single sip from each glass before getting another glass. Every utensil, dish and pan was delicately balanced on every single inch of counter space and piled high like a bizarre tetris game.

Today, my head feels like it is packed with one too many cotton balls, but I don’t dare let Doug handle everything. His version of watching Evan would involve video cameras and duct tape.

the devil you know

// July 21st, 2009 // 1 Comment » // health, me, parenting

I’m done. I want all my children back home. I’m tired of Noah being quarantined with the other scouts, Amy here with a scout sibling and my other children at the grandparents. A night alone with my husband is fun, but this isn’t fun. This is stressful. This is my heart doing that weird flutter thing all the time and me on the verge of tears because I’m not getting any sleep. Instead of staying in our different levels of quarantine indefinitely, I want our lives back. If someone gets sick, we’ll give all the children the $120 per person TamiFlu and be quarantined in the house together.

I knew that I was fighting something that couldn’t be controlled. How many people do we interact with daily who have Strep or a cold or some other contagious cootie? We have spent the past 5 days standing still. Waiting. If I knew I would die tomorrow, I wouldn’t get in bed and try to assume a Sleeping Beauty pose. I would dance and sing and play with my family. I miss dancing. I miss laughing. Tonight, everyone will be home and my body will feel 10 pounds lighter, even if it doesn’t look it. I might still cry from exhaustion, but they’ll be happy tears followed by a night with a 4-year-old snuggled up against me.

I haven’t gone through a transformation. I’m still going to avoid visiting anyone even if they promise to keep their puking child out of sight. With only one prescription for antibiotics for one child the entire school year last year, I think that’s too effective a method to dismiss. I just learned that being away from my children makes me sick. And grumpy.

like a slow motion train wreck

// July 19th, 2009 // 6 Comments » // health, medical, scouts

Late Thursday night, we got a phone call from *camp that two boys in Noah’s troop were sick and H1N1 was suspected. After a sleepless night, we got another phone call saying that the two sick scouts didn’t have H1N1′s trademark high fever and life returned to our version of normal. Saturday, the phone call report was that multiple scouts in our troop AND the camp were sick and one of our scouts was hospitalized. <- insert mom panic here ->

We called the pede before the boys arrived home from camp. Our pede won’t prescribe TamiFlu for the children until one of them gets sick. We sent all the siblings to the grandparents and began the wait for a symptom that would send us to the ER for TamiFlu. I called again the next day when Noah’s temp rose to 99.6 and he started refusing food and complaining of sleepiness. The on-call nurse went out of her way to be rude and insulting to me while telling me there was no reason to go to the ER before the temp is 105. I tweeted a nasty word in frustration. Six people from our troop have been diagnosed so far. In the mean time, every scout who came home exposed every person they saw. The parents in our son’s troop work for Knox County Schools, ORNL, UTK, the U.S. military and more. There is no way to list all the places that our scouts and their families have been in Knoxville since they were first exposed. It is way beyond containable now. Worse than that, one boy is STILL in the hospital. I wonder if the stress knot in my belly will keep me from getting sick enough to need medical care? One major illness without insurance will be one too many for us to bear. I would really like to say c’est la vie, but I think that’s impossible without modern pharmaceuticals. Or ice cream.

*Read the comments on the camp’s blog and see that no matter what they do, they are made the bad guys. Keep the boys at camp? Parents upset. Send the boys home? Parents upset.

BASIC Parenting

// June 17th, 2009 // No Comments » // health, parenting

10 INPUT “Mom, do you want to see my *poison ivy rash oozing?”
20 OUTPUT “Sound of Mother gagging.”
30 GOTO 10

*I have also been asked:
“tooth hanging by a thread?”
“bug collection?”
“present from the cat that the dog is eating?”
“footprints from the dog poo I squished with my shoe?”
“bed where the cat throwed up?”
“dead bug collection?”
“poo that looks like a happy face?”

Blogger Bigboote

// May 18th, 2009 // 2 Comments » // blogging, health, me

When I was young, I had a huge callous at the top of my middle finger from writing so much. I am not exaggerating. It was so enormous that people constantly commented on it. “Wow! You must write a LOT.” I may have been self conscious about every other part of my appearance, but that finger callous was a source of pride. I don’t know when the callous shrunk down to just a rough patch of skin, but it’s been gone for long time now. After I spent most of the weekend sitting at the computer with no finished anything to show for my efforts, I started missing that finger callous. With the amount of time I spent tapping on keys, my fingertips should have little pads on their tips. Maybe the fingerprints should be rubbed smooth. Instead, I’ve earned a big giant behind for all the hours I sit at the computer. That’s just not right. I would much prefer a double-wide finger to a double-wide seat.

24 hours from serious to silly

// April 27th, 2009 // 1 Comment » // Doug, health, kid quotes, people, television

Doug: “There’s an ambulance at the retirement home.”
Me: “Seniors do like to visit Mexico.”
Doug: “Must be swine flu.”

K: cough-cough
T: “Got some swine flu K?”

Doug: “My head is splitting.”
Me: “Swine flu. Shouldn’t have gone to Market Square Friday night.”

Amy: “What’s swine?”
Me: “Pigs.”
Amy: “Why are the pigs sick?”

buy bread and milk

// April 26th, 2009 // 1 Comment » // health, people

H1N1 Swine Flu information or a reason to panic about other nasty cooties.
How Twitter users are preparing:
@Busymom Add eggs and beer.
@RussM Surgical masks and chocolate.
@raowen hydrogen peroxide, alcohol, bandaides and bottled water

Want to know if you have Swine Flu? Click here

I do not think it means what you think it means

// April 1st, 2009 // 6 Comments » // child welfare, health, mental health, politics

stimulus: something that rouses or incites to activity: as a: incentive b: stimulant 1 c: an agent (as an environmental change) that directly influences the activity of a living organism or one of its parts (as by exciting a sensory organ or evoking muscular contraction or glandular secretion)

Children’s Services -16.40%
Division of Mental Retardation -52.92%
Economic and Community Development -22.84%
Mental Health & Developmental Disabilities -13.10%

Literacy classes, job skill training, workshops and almost anything that provides education is stimulating. Bringing new companies to the state and helping small businesses get started is stimulating. Free wi-fi is stimulating. Using it for less than what you already had is NOT stimulating. If you are using money to slow down the hemorrhaging, you should call it bandage money.

Putting services for the neediest citizens on the chopping block is going to result in a surge of homelessness, over-burdened and under-financed hospitals and a tremendous spike in crime. Tennesseans are going to have to put aside differences and work together like never before.