Thursday, January 6, 2011

It's Regan's Fault*



We had quite a memorable New Year's Eve. I woke up on New Year's Eve at about 4:30 that morning in Columbus, Ohio. We had stayed the night in Columbus on our way back from Kansas City. I rolled over and over but I could not get back to sleep. See, Jeff has sleep apnea and if he sleeps without his mask, it sounds like some one is cutting down an entire forest of trees! Unfortunately, for us both, his mask broke the first day of the vacation, so for nearly two weeks, neither of us slept well.** Anyway, I wasn't getting back to sleep, Doug was restless between us and Jeff kept on waking himself up. So I decided that since none of us were sleeping we'd at least get on the road and be home by that afternoon. I was able to clam down and blow off some steam in the shower (don't mess with my sleep) and I come out into the room to find that Doug had thrown up all over the place. So there went my nice relaxed mood. I started working damage control. Jeff had done a good job on keeping the bio hazard localized, but Doug was still very upset. I calmed him down and took his temp, which was 102.3. So I dosed him with some Tylenol and called our pediatrician's after hours line. The line told us that Dr. So & So was covering for him and to call her. I called Dr. So & So and the message told us that our pediatrician was covering for her! Epic fail! So I called my mom. Anyway, long story short, we got Doug calm, clean and dressed and put him in the car. I think we left Columbus at about 7ish? I do feel badly for the person who had to clean our room. Doug sure knows how to destroy a hotel room!

For the rest of the day in the car Doug mostly slept. Unfortunately I couldn't get his fever down. I called his Dr.'s office and they were concerned about his high fever too, but as we were in Ohio, not much could be done about it. The nurse said we could take him to the ER or an urgent care facility, but neither of those were available at the time, so our goal was to just get him home. At about 11 we stopped some where in West Virginia for lunch. We wanted to eat quickly so we could get back on the road, so we headed toward a McDonald's. But lo and behold, what was next to the McDonald's!?!? An urgent care facility! I told Jeff that I thought it was a sign, so we took Doug in. We were told the wait was long, but actually we got in an out in a relatively short time. The doctor saw Doug and agreed with us that it was a stomach virus and told us the correct dosage*** of Tylenol for Doug. He also recommended that we try ibuprofen instead. So after the visit we got back in the car and drove to a pharmacy in town, dosed Doug with ibuprofen and headed back to McDonald's.

You know how some times something happens to you, or somebody does something to you accidentally and you really really want to throttle them but you know it's not their damn fault? That's what happened to me at McDonald's. I'd been going on no more than four hours of interrupted sleep the past two nights. I was beyond fatigued and in a lot of pain. I'd been dealing with a sick baby all day. In short, I was thisclose to going over the edge. Doug was asleep on the table in his carrier and Jeff brought the tray to the table with our lunch on it. Jeff reached for something and some how his gigantic Dr. Pepper was knocked over and spilled all over the table. A good portion went onto my lap, and the rest went into my brand new purse. Luckily, nothing in my purse was ruined, but everything was soaked and sticky. There were pools of soda in my purse. Jeff jumped up and helped me mop up and helped me pull things out of my purse. At the time the only thing I could say to him was to tell him to go to the car and get some plastic bags for the contents of my purse.

It was probably really good for our marriage that Jeff left me for that minute in a half. I was able to pull myself together and calm down. I realized that I had some options at hand. Option 1, I could yell at Jeff, which would allow me to vent. However, this will make Jeff feel worse and in the end will make us both miserable. Option 2, I could let it go and we can move on. I chose option 2. We were already both pretty miserable and really needed a break.

Anyway, Jeff came back in and we got resettled and began our lunch. After a few minutes Jeff said to me, "This whole trip has been my fault." I grabbed a french fry while I pondered my response to that. "Well, actually no. It's not your fault that you grew up in Kansas City. That's where your parents lived. They probably settled there in the 80s because of the economy. So, actually, it's Regan's fault. Yep, I think the blame resides squarely on his shoulders." So we had a nice quiet lunch and loaded Doug back up. By the time we got home on NYE, we were all dead tired, but Doug's fever broke. All in all, not a terrible end to 2010.



*I was in Kindergarten when the 80s ended. History classes never covered something as recent as the 80s, so really I have little to no idea what the economy in the 80s was like. Humor me.

**Fibromyalgia symptoms are worsened by poor, interrupted sleep. They've actually done studies in which they've screwed up the subject's sleep, and they have many fibro like symptoms. So seriously, don't screw with my sleep!

***Tylenol, or at least the generic we got, doesn't give you dosage per weight for children under 2. You're supposed to talk to your doctor about it. The last time we got that info for Doug was at least 5 lbs ago. On the other hand, the Advil we bought ONLY gives dosing instructions for children under 2. Go figure.

1 comment:

  1. I think I read somewhere once that they don't like to post ANY dosages of any medication for children under 2. Because clearly the little rugrats never get sick. Now I don't have kids so I haven't done any personal studies of this info...but I can come up with all sorts of reasons behind it.

    The rest of the story I'm just not commenting on. Cause ugh.

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