It’s been tough finding time to write. My days off seem to
be filled with responsible-parent stuff, and both of the girls are in
full-swing in their respective grades in school. Ella has dance and Girl
Scouts, and Emme is into mischief and shenanigans. Our home is rarely quiet,
and I’ve grown to love the moments when the noise is almost overbearing.
Currently they are both laughing and screaming and splashing around in the tub,
which leaves me little peace to write in silence. But no matter, I love the
noise because it was gone for a few days.
Ella was sick last week. And I mean an entire week. She had
a headache, some nausea, and she wouldn’t eat. Most concerning to me was that
she didn’t laugh at my hilarious jokes. On Tuesday I made the call to keep her
at home and bring her into urgent care whey punched holes in her veins and took
all of the other samples you might want a doctor to look through if you wanted
to find bacteria or poison or whatever makes a child sick. We waited and
waited, and each test proved nothing to me. The nurses and doctors told me of
elevated something levels and high something counts but it was all gibberish to
me. It took a few days to find E. coli in her urine which still—as far as we
know—might not be the end of it, but it’s all we have for now.
Today is day nine of her sickness but she is all but back to
normal. She’s laughing, yelling, fighting with her sister, and eating. I think
we’re in the clear, but I’d rather hear it from a doctor tomorrow morning which
we likely will.
Last Saturday we took a trip to a cool apple orchard in the
middle of nowhere where they had chickens, kittens, geese, goats, cows, and
apples. All of these things must be touched by children, and there’s a
possibility something transferred from butt to stomach even with hand sanitizer
available to use everywhere.
I recall ten years ago, helping a friend move hay
bales, I saw a goat standing alone in a field. Naturally, I went over to pet
it, and I recoiled when I realized it was covered in its own feces. Truly, I
never thought of washing my hands after that and simply wiped my hands off on
my tattered jeans. The next two weeks I was as close to death as I had ever
been until that point. I never threw up after the first day, but for seven
straight days, I couldn’t fart, and I could only poop in tablespoon-amount increments,
sometimes thirty times a day. I had severe cramping, and couldn’t sleep. I ate
one pack of Ramen every day, and I spaced it out throughout the day. I rapidly
lost weight, and I couldn’t drink my usual 24-pack of beer. It was a mess, but
by the time I went to the hospital and was diagnosed, it had run its course and
I was on the mend, and right back to drinking canned beer and whisky from a
bottle.
Being sick isn’t fun, and getting poked with needles doesn’t
make anything more fun. I remember being upset that they took my blood and didn’t
find anything out from it. That’s my blood. They took four tubes of Ella’s
blood and I don’t know if it helped anything, and I had to hold her while the
needle was in. It seemed like an eternity to me, I can’t imagine how she felt.
But she’s a trooper, she survived. She’s alive. Back to school tomorrow. Back
to being a kid.
