When It Rains

*Warning: this post may contain graphic images that may be upsetting to sensitive readers.

When someone says they've had "one of those weeks", there are usually sighs of commiseration and nods of understanding. It's common knowledge that during "those weeks" anything that could go wrong does. I've had one of those weeks.

There were the regular annoyances of life, as usual. These things become a pretty normal weekly routine when you have kids. Someone spills milk about once a day. Someone drops a plate or a bowl (always full of food) a couple times a week. Toes get stubbed. A book or toy gets ruined beyond salvaging. Someone has an accident right next to the toilet. One little boy yells from his room that he puked all over himself, and you find out thankfully (thankfully?) it was due to his finger in his throat rather than an epidemic gearing up to sweep through the house. Things don't get done because there are too many other things needing to be done. This week took it one step further.

When Addie woke up from her Sunday afternoon nap with a temp of 103.2, my first thought was that she had picked up a virus. The week before we had been to the clinic twice, and it seems like every time we walk through those doors somebody gets something. By Monday she was listless, sleeping most the day in between tossing her hot, feverish, little body around, so I decided to take her in. By the time we got to the clinic her temp had reached 103.8. They tested her for the flu which mercifully came back negative, and diagnosed her with double ear infection instead. This is only her second time with ear infection, and again she gave us no clue that her ears were the problem until we saw the doctor.

There are informational cards up in the clinic that tell you antibiotics won't work for most ear infections, many types of bronchitis, viral infections, etc., etc., etc. It always plants a seed of anxiety in my heart that visiting the doctor may prove to be futile. Even at that, antibiotics are consistently prescribed for many of those things, often unnecessarily. When you're a parent clinging to the last fragile remnants of your sanity, starved for sleep and desperate for help to get your baby well again, it's pretty easy to jump on whatever " this should work" train the doctor suggests. I'm all for letting your body work to heal itself when it can, and I held out for as long as I could for Addie's fever to do it's work. This week it was enough to break my heart. And yet, I'm struggling with guilt over giving her antibiotics.

After we started amoxicillin Addie seemed worse, with the exception of the fever. I have only once before seen her so miserable. She began pulling her ears like she wanted to rip them off. She spent hours screaming and crying unless I carried her around. She only slept if I held her. The house descended into a mess of things I couldn't finish. I did what I could to help her ears heal. I made a fresh batch of garlic infused olive oil and dropped it in her ears. I massaged her ear canal behind her ear lobe and along her jaw line to help drain whatever fluid may have been there, and it seemed to give her some relief.

Wednesday night I woke to hear Addie wheezing, so I propped her up to help her breathe. Thursday morning she woke with a rash spreading over her face, chest, and back: an allergic reaction to the antibiotics. I ran her back to the doctor and they switched her to a different family of antibiotics. Within hours she was a brand new girl. When her appetite came back I happily let her dig in to her favorite meal--face first.

A sick baby is more than enough to create a tough week, but that wasn't even close to it for us. Wednesday, in the middle of the afternoon, I paced and rocked my screaming child and tried to find a quiet place in my mind to forget about the pervading nausea that was overwhelming me. A migraine had developed and was threatening to split my head in two. The kitchen door flew open and Aidan ran in crying that we had a serious problem: a piece of the quartz he was smashing with a hammer (what?! whyyyy?!) flew into his hand and "I CAN SEE MY BONE! IT'S NOT BLEEDING! WHY IS IT NOT BLEEDING? AM I GOING TO HAVE TO BE SEWN SHUT?!!!" 

My heart in my throat, I assessed the situation, and sure enough, you could see bone. The rock had sliced open his knuckle. I immediately sent a picture to my husband, who was at work. Trying to stay as calm as possible, telling him it was going to be just fine, I walked Aidan to the bathroom to clean him up. The poor guy was numb from shock and said he couldn't even feel it. I had him put his head down while I disinfected the wound and bandaged it, making sure to pull the skin tightly together. As soon as I had cleaned it the blood started flowing. When Eli came home he looked at it, and we had a pros/cons session about whether or not he needed stitches. We decided to keep an eye on it, and if the skin didn't stay together we would run him in. The way my week was going if I stepped foot in the ER I probably would have contracted Ebola or something. I taped a popsicle-stick splint to his finger and wrapped his hand...his right hand...and gave him a pass on handwriting for the week.

Aidan's gash, one day later versus three days later.

Friday afternoon my Mom came to pick Gavin up for the weekend. After they left, Liam and Ian wanted to play outside with no big brother to keep an eye on them. I hesitated, but decided that Liam was a pretty careful kid. Of all the boys he's least likely to do something dangerous, and he's pretty conscientious about telling Ian when something shouldn't be done. With warnings to stay away from the creek and the street, I bundled them up and sent them out. After peeking out the window every few minutes to see what they were doing, I went back to work on my pile of laundry.

After a while I started having an uneasy feeling. I went to each window in turn on every side of the house, trying to spy one of the boys, but seeing neither. A sense of urgency started tugging at me, so slipped sandals on and headed out to see what they were up to. As I rounded the side of the garage I saw Ian running up from the "back 40", the far end of our yard along the creek. He was yelling, "Mama! Help! Liam's stuck in a tree!"

Ah boy. So that's why I couldn't see him. This was not a first for us, as earlier this summer we had to get a ladder out to rescue Gavin from an impossibly high branch in the swing tree. I scanned the trees along the creek but still couldn't see Liam...what in the world? As I got closer to the tree line I could hear whimpering, and then I saw him: hanging upside down by his ankle from a tree. I started running, sandals flew off, Oh Jesus, hold my boy up till I get there! Please let him not be impaled by a stick!

I was about ten feet away when I saw his ankle turned backwards, the wrong way. My heart stopped. There was no way his leg was in one piece. It was a mercy that he was stuck just a bit higher than my head, and I was able to lift his little 63 pound body up and dislodge his ankle. I cradled him in my arms and ran for the house, trying not to move or jiggle his leg. My legs started giving out by the time I made it to the driveway. As the adrenaline wore off I turned into a shaking mess of jellied muscle.

I kept telling Ian to run to the house to get Dad, but the little shadow refused to leave my side. It felt like forever before I made it into the house and collapsed in the kitchen with Liam. Pulling up the leg of his jeans, I started shakily trying to explain to Eli where and how I had found him. I could see some light scrapes on his shin, and his toes were pointing straight forward. He could wiggle his toes. After a few minutes he could stand and walked off. I crawled in a dark corner and bawled and shook and bawled some more. Needless to say, my nerves are pretty much shot.

My socks after the adrenaline-fueled dash across the yard. They will never be the same again.

His angel must have been holding him up in the tree. I don't know how his leg did not break, twisted how it was. Looking back, all of our angels must have been working extra hard for us this week. As bad as it's been, all of these situations could have ended so MUCH WORSE! Addie could have had influenza or gone into full-blown anaphylaxis. That chip of quartz could have taken out an eye. Liam could have broke his leg. And yet, here we all are, alive, still in whole pieces. Thank you, Jesus.

This was a fitting end to the week: the mirror that I had salvaged and saved specifically for the bathroom makeover for the last two years, shattered. It happened when we finally made it to the finish line, to the point where all we needed to do was paint it and hang it. Weeks like this are great at reminding us how transitory things are.