The epic virus

So the weekend that started out so awesome ended very, very less than awesome! I had a class at 8am on Saturday back in San Antonio (along with an hour and a half drive) so I got up early to make it back.

I went to class and then called mom during break to check on Bradyn. Mom said he was really, really sick. He had been throwing up since about seven am and wasn’t showing any signs of stopping. When I got home it was apparent that she was not exaggerating. We spent the day taking turns. She would hold him until he threw up on her, I would clean things up, I would take him so that she could go get cleaned up, by the time she was clean he would have thrown up on me so the cycle started again. If he weren’t so sad and miserable it would have been comical. We were trying to give him small amounts of water as often as possible but he just kept throwing up. 

That evening, I started getting worried about his seizure meds because he still wasn’t keeping anything down and that would be two doses that he hadn’t absorbed. I called his doctor and he called in a prescription to try and slow down the vomiting. I left B and mom at home and I ran to the pharmacy. When I got there it was madness, cars everywhere, people everywhere. I stood in line for about 20 minutes attempting to think positive thoughts and not get carried away with worry. When I finally got to the front of the line the tech told me that it would be a 3 hour wait for the medicine. I tried to respond calmly but calm sounded more like a frantic strangled scream as I immediately started crying and told her that I needed the medicine in order to stop my son from throwing up and hopefully help him avoid a seizure. She calmly and dismissively told me to go sit down and she would see what she could do. 45 minutes later I had the meds and was on my way. (Thank you Walgreens pharmacy tech for taking pity on me and helping me get home as fast as possible!)

I got home just as Kyle and Greg were getting home from Austin. YAY more grown up hands! We gave B the meds and crossed our fingers. He didn’t completely stop throwing up but he did slow down. He was able to take his seizure meds, some Tylenol, drink some water and get a little bit of sleep. He continued like that all night and all of Sunday. Mom left on Sunday, she didn’t really want to, she felt like she should stay but in the end decided to go home so that she could make it to work on Monday. We were up most of the night on Sunday night and on Monday morning I called his doctor and scheduled an appointment for that afternoon. Kyle stayed home with B and I went into the office to get a bit of work done. When I got home at noon he looked a lot better, Kyle and I even had a conversation about “should we take him to the doctor or should we let him rest at home and continue to recover?”. In the end we decided to keep the appointment. He has rallied like that in the past, he starts acting normal and we think “oh wow, he’s all better” then we cancel an appointment and all of the sudden all hell breaks loose.

And that’s exactly what happened this time. He fell asleep watching TV, I went to wake him up to get him ready to go to the doctor and he started seizing and seizing. It lasted 5 minutes. Actually based on when we stopped and started timing it lasted 6 minutes but I am subtracting a minute because I think the last minute he was coming out but I was too freaked out to stop the clock. He has NEVER has a seizure that lasted that long before. It was absolutely terrifying! We bundled him up and drove to the doctor. They took us right back to an exam room, took one look at him and told us we were going to the hospital. His doctor called ahead and direct admitted us so we didn’t have to go to the emergency room and the hospital is right across the street so he was in a room about 40 minutes later.

The next few days are a blur of tests and IVs and sleep and no sleep and trying to figure out how to manage work and responsibilities and be there for Bradyn. I spent the majority of his stay curled up in his bed with him. He was a little trooper, he put up with the blood draws and the tubes and the wires like a champ. My mom drove back down Monday night (she is an awesome mom) so we had he help. Once all the tests came in we found out that B had Rotavirus and all of the doctors told us that the seizure was a result of the virus and his body being tired and dehydrated so we are not supposed to worry about his neurological condition (yeah right).

He was released from the hospital on Thursday and we spent the weekend resting. He is doing great now. Went back to daycare on Monday and back to soccer on Wednesday, I am ready to have a nice quite normal life for a little while.

Happy Birthday to me!

My birthday was on Wednesday. I turned 35. HOW did I get to be 35? I don’t feel 35. What does 35 even feel like? I remember when I was 15 and my mom turned 35, I thought that was so old! (sorry mom) I also remember thinking that size 7 was HUGE and a size that I would NEVER be…. In retrospect, I was an idiot….

I celebrate my birthday for the entire month of April. We call it my “birthday month”.

On Wednesday my dad, his wife, their son (my little brother) Matthew, my uncle, my Grandma and my brother Greg came over for dinner. The guys cooked dinner outside on the grill, the boys played in Bradyn’s playroom. This is why we moved to San Antonio, so that we can be around family and just hang out. It was the perfect birthday!

On Thursday our friends Joe and Jess came over to continue the celebration. The plan was to cook a big dinner but I got lazy and hungry so we ordered Chinese takeout. After a conversation that went something like this:

me - “I’m hungry and tired, let’s order food”

Kyle - “we could throw some steaks on the grill”

me – “I forgot to defrost any, I’m hungry and tired, lets order food”

Joe – “we could make steak pinwheels on the grill”

me – “I’m hungry and tired, let’s just order food”

Jess – “I think Elizabeth just wants to order food”

Kyle – “we could run to the store and get some steaks and cook them outside”

Joe – “Yeah!”

Jess – “I think Elizabeth just wants to order food”

Kyle – “can we run to the store?”

me – “if you don’t get me food now, I’m going to eat your arm”

Kyle – “here are the menu’s we have, who wants to order out?”

Yum Yum Yum, I heart Chinese takeout. We ended up spending the evening around the dining room table finishing a puzzle that Kyle and I had been working on FOREVER. This made me realize two things;

1 – I AM 35! If five years ago someone had suggested we celebrate my birthday by staying in a working on a puzzle I would have taken back their friendship card!
2 – I LOVE Joe and Jess! They stayed in, ordered food and worked on a puzzle with me ya’ll. These are good people!

On Friday my mom drove down from Dallas to stay with Bradyn so that Greg, Kyle and I could drive up to Austin and spend the evening drinking celebrating and watching Chelsea Handler do a live stand-up comedy show at the Bass Performance Hall. I LOVE Chelsea Handler and had been looking forward to this night out for months! The show didn’t start until 10:30 PM, we all had to work and we wanted to have dinner with mom and B so we got a late start. The series of events that followed was hectic but it just happened to be one of those nights where everything falls into place. We checked into our hotel about 9:15 and I asked the lady at the front desk to call us a cab. We ran to our room. Dropped off our stuff, freshened up and ran back down to the front to grab our cab. At 10 we still had no cab so I went back to the front desk. Pay close attention here, the dip shit at the desk said “Oh my gosh! I got busy and never called for your cab!” It’s now 10:10 and the show starts in 20 minutes and I’m FREAKING out! We go get our car and I drive to the venue. This is not a good start to the evening as I have just become the designated driver for my own birthday event! We parked and ran to the entrance to find a mob of people.

Apparently the early show ended late and they were having a hard time letting all of those folks exit while all of the people arriving for the late show were attempting to enter. We went to the ticket office to pick up our tickets. We had four tickets, our fourth had cancelled and we had been unable to find a replacement. I turned away from the ticket desk and looked for someone that might want to purchase our extra ticket. I found a nice stranger she bought our single ticket at face value and we headed to our seats. (Can you say BEER money?) The show was AWESOME. I laughed and laughed and then laughed some more.

After the show Chelsea was signing books back stage. You had to buy a book and then you got a wristband that would get you back to the signing. Greg bought me a book for my b-day but as we turned to get my wristband THEY RAN THE EFF OUT!!!! Are you kidding me? I tried to plead my case to the chick watching the door but she wasn't having it, "NO wristband NO entry!" After a bit of thought we made our way around to the exit. I waited for someone to come out and then made some small talk about her book and asked to see the signature, then I asked if I could PLEASE have her wristband now that she was done with it. She was nice and not a douche so she slipped her band off and gave it to me. WOOHOO! Wait, one small problem, she had these tiny little hands and I couldn't get the wristband over my abnormally regular sized hand. I think the guys were about to write it off as a no way but I shimmied and struggled and finally ripped the little paper band open and then carefully re affixed it around my wrist. Success! I was able to confidently march past the "NO" lady and get into a LONG line to meet Chelsea Handler. What... A night! I love that Chelsea Handler.... She seems to know a lot about me.

That is ONE smart lady!

While I was busy meeting my idol the guys kept themselves busy and out of trouble.

We found a little hole in the wall Irish Pub off 6th street that was phenomenal. The clientele was KRAZY and the bartender was even KRAZYER! I LOVE people watching Krazy especially on the rare occasions that I’m not part of the Krazy. At one point the bartender grabbed a girls pint of beer threw it in the trash and said “get OUT of here, you’ve been pissing me off since 3 o’clock” at which point the obviously American coed replied with a thick, slurred, fake Irish accent “Aye! Now you owe me a new pint o beer” It was absolute awesomeness!

The next morning I left early to get back in time for school while the guys stayed in Austin to play. At some point during the day they were on a quest for a bathroom and this is a close as they could get.

“Everything you ever wanted is beyond this fence.”

All I can say is it was one fantastic road trip!

Bradyn HATES Pre-school

Did I tell you Bradyn hated pre-school? I didn't? I know I told facebook (you can friend me here). Well, he HATED pre-school. The first day he was all jazzed about going and didn't cry when I left him and I thought "This is fabulous, I'm such a great mom, I did my research and selected the best possible pre-school (the one that really cost's more than we can afford) and my well adjusted son feels so loved and safe that he is independent and happy to go to school. I rock!" When I picked him up he was a little whimpery but not too bad. In the name of spring time his class planted a garden and a little girl had stepped on his plant. The plant that we had painstakingly picked out at the nursery the day before. The plant that he LOVED. So I figured the pathetic crying was all about the plant. The next day he whined a bit when I dropped him off but I thought no big, all kids whine a bit about going to school. But when I picked him up he stumbled to me like a victim of a tragedy and when he got to me he sobbed and sobbed in my arms. Sobbed so hard that he couldn't tell me what was wrong. I took him home and realized that he felt a little clammy, took his temp and he had a fever. "Well of course he is crying he is sick" is what I thought, I never thought "oh lord he is sick and he hated pre-school to the core of his little 3 year old being". He ended up being for reals and actually sick. We stayed home Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and all weekend.

On Monday he started with the begging "Mommy, please no go to work. Stay home mommy, no go pre-school." This continued all week, as we drove he would give me options of other places we could go instead "grandpa's, memi's, the zoo, sea world, Dallas". On Tuesday when I went to pick him up the teacher told me they had been trying to call me because he had cried ALL DAY LONG, turns out they couldn't get through because they had my area code wrong. (are you effing kidding me?) On Wednesday I called no less than 6 times to check on him and every time they said he was crying. At nap time they let him come to the phone so that I could tell him everything was okay and he couldn't even talk to me, I could just hear his jagged breathing and his sobs. I told him how much I loved him and that I would be there to pick him up soon and he said "can you find me mommy". (That's when I thought EEEEEEEKKKK I am a HORRIBLE mommy! My son is so tramatized that he thinks that I have lost him and that he is stuck at pre-school forever! Good mommy's children never think that!) That night he woke up in the middle of the night crying saying that he just wanted to go home. On Thursday his teacher told me he drew a picture and spent the day carrying it around crying and telling people that it was his mommy.... But the final straw, the final straw came on Friday when I picked him up and asked him if he had a good day, his answer was "I'm fine now mommy. I just cried ALL day". That was it for me. I know that it takes time and I know that a lot of kids cry for a week or two when they first start at daycare or school but I was done. I couldn't focus on work, I couldn't sleep, and I couldn't do anything knowing that he was miserable. A good friend told me that her son attended a great at home daycare with a pre-school curriculum very close to my house. I called the lady, we met her on Saturday and on Monday Bradyn went to her house instead of pre-school. We are 3 days in and he is a different kid. He wakes up happy, tells me how much he loves her and doesn't cry when I drop him off or pick him up! I am so glad that we were able to find another option that works for him so quickly. (so happy that I'm not going to dwell on the fact that now we have to pay for the new daycare AND the old pre-school that we couldn't really even afford to begin with for 30 more days. Yep, you read that right 30 DAYS thats how much notice I was required to give. CRAZYNESS!)

I am worried about what we are going to do when he is 5 and I have to send him to school. What if he still doesn't adapt well? Have you dealt with this? What did you do?

Happy Easter!

Participated in a food drive this morning that generated 42 TONS of food for the local food bank! So JAZZED!!!!! Happy Happy Easter everyone!