Showing posts with label disease. Show all posts
Showing posts with label disease. Show all posts

Saturday, January 01, 2011

It's a Start

Happy New Year, everybody!

I obviously took a break after the namopoblowme thingy, but supposedly I'm rested and refreshed, and ready to play again. I always need to start slowly after a break, so let me start with a piece of advice:

If you happen to have strep throat, even if you are on the mend, wasabi is not the recommended food of choice during this time.

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

My Compassion Wanes with the Patient's Age

In light of Chichi's illness that started yesterday, my mom took Pumpkin out for the day such that they both had a chance at staying healthy, and that I could be at Chichi's beck and call. This made for a pretty boring day considering that Chichi neither 'becked', nor called!

As it turns out, Chichi is exactly like her father when she isn't feeling well. Whenever J gets a cold or flu, he comes home and heads straight to bed. Then he stays there for 18 hours or so, turning the bed into his own personal sweat lodge, ignoring his family, and snapping at me for trying to care for him . Nice, eh? Do you think that I get to do that when I'm sick?

Chichi went to bed at 6pm yesterday. At 6am today, she needed medicine, and then she flopped back down in her bed. At 9am, I brought her water. She drank it, then flopped back down in her bed. At noon I brought her crackers. She ate them, then flopped back down in her bed. At 2pm I check in on her. She refused to get out of bed. She was in that bed for almost 24 hours straight! She got up for two whole hours of play this evening, but then she wanted to go back to bed.

So, like father like daughter. Both feel the need to drop out of family life when they aren't feeling well. The only difference is that when Chichi decides to do this, I find myself impressed with her instinct. Whenever J does this, I feel compelled to throw lit matches at his head.

Tuesday, November 09, 2010

Inaugural Moment in Parenting

Chichi threw up in my car. A first for me. I even managed to catch her in the act as I glanced in the rear view mirror at just the right time. And then the smell...

I have now learned not to continually try different foods on a child who doesn't seem keen on eating in the first place. If the Cheerios are a no-go, don't push milk and raisins.

So I was forced into doing laundry during peak energy hours today, but I'm trying to look at the bright side nonetheless. For one, everything that got messed up was something that I could remove from the car and hose off on the driveway. I'm also happy that it isn't too cold to actually hose things off in the driveway. The big plus is that she didn't throw up in the house that we were visiting just 15 minutes prior. That would have been a tad embarrassing.

I've been extra fortunate in this particular realm of parenting. Pumpkin didn't throw up for the first time until she was four, and even then it was just once. Today was Chichi's first time. She seems ok but no doubt I'll be checking on her 20 times tonight.

So is it a virus? Are we all going to lose another 'Norwalk Five'? Or did Chichi just ingest the wrong type of dog food. Stay tuned!

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

It's a Good Thing I'm Too Lazy

Yesterday was the first day that I was able to eat normally since I came down with a stomach virus one week ago. Consequently, I have lost a bit of weight. It's really just a few pounds, bound to return any minute now, but for the time being, I'm a little lighter than usual. Naturally I love this fact, despite my not being overweight to start with.

Yesterday, a friend of mine came by for a visit, and after sitting with me for a few minutes stated, "You've really lost weight this week!" She didn't say it like it was a good thing. She said it with concern. Immediately, I began to reply with a "Thank you!", but managed to stop myself. Why did I immediately jump to the conclusion that I was being complimented? I can blame society for most of it, but it's amazing how my thought process has been influenced after a life time of not looking like Barbie.

It's like I have an unmotivated eating disorder. I would never deliberately make myself throw up, unless I was trying to stop the bed from spinning, but last week, on the morning after I involuntarily tossed my cookies, I hopped on the scale, looked at the abnormally low number for myself, and thought, 'Woohoo! Too bad I have to hydrate.' Sick, sick, sick!

Do not fear for me though. Tonight I was back to scarfing down a bag of ketchup chips while watching an intellectual two hours of American Idol. Obviously, being unmotivated is not limited to my eating disorder.

Saturday, January 09, 2010

Saturday's Mom is Full of Rant

Cost of replacing electronic key for leased car six months ago:

$175.00

Cost of finding lost key in my ski jacket half an hour ago:

Five self-imposed smacks on the counter top with my forehead

Cost of just discovering that neither Chichi's nor Pumpkin's stomachs are entirely settled from our ongoing plague:

Two more loads of laundry

Cost of disclosing information about my children's lingering illnesses to tonight's babysitter:

Babysitter running for the hills; me having to give up my ticket to tonight's Leaf's game; hubby being instructed to take one of his friends

Cost of being married to a man who didn't try too hard to find someone to go with, and then decided on his own to give away both tickets so he could spend the evening with his icky kids and pissy wife...

Wednesday, January 06, 2010

I Had a Good Excuse...

Chichi has been a little under the weather this week, mostly in a good mood, but turning out some pretty gross diapers. Yesterday as hubby walked in the door, I jumped up, told him that I seemed to have Chichi's disease, and ran for the washroom in the basement. Welcome home, honey! It all went downhill from there.

I had taken to the guest room to stay out of the way, and Chichi was ready for bed, so all that hubby had to do was contend with Pumpkin. Except things didn't go that way. First off, Chichi's soother was missing, so she was freaking out in her crib. Hubby, in a mild panic, told me that he couldn't find her 'owie'. Owie is the word used by my friend's son for his blanket, and is not a word typically used around here. Our blankets are 'giki's', and our soothers are soothers. Regardless, I was looking for the wrong thing while intermittently running to the washroom.

Meanwhile, back in Pumpkin's world, she had gone to bed complaining of a sore tummy, which culminated in her pretty much painting her bed and the walls with the contents of her stomach. She was really upset, so I set in motion the cleaning process, while also looking for a blanket that wasn't lost, while continuing to intermittently run to the nearest washroom. Both kids were crying, while we tried to get it together. Hubs called my mother to see if she knew where the owie was, but her reply was, "Leave me alone! I'm busy throwing up!" Virus confirmed.

It had finally happened to me. This was the low point in parenting that I had read about in books that was supposed to be a story reserved for fiction, or at least something that only happened to other people. I guess we had a good, long vomit-free stretch, if nothing else.

Eventually, Hubby said he was going out to buy an owie, which seemed odd, so I figured out that he meant a pacifier, which I was able to produce within ten seconds. Ok, I had one down. Then it was on to cleaning Pumpkin's mess, which proved to be a never ending battle as the night went on.

If you happen to have the storage space, I highly recommend that you purchase three or four discount beds-in-a-bag for just such an occasion. I cannot believe the amount of linens we have gone through over here! The washing machine has been running since about 9pm last night, and it will probably be running until bedtime tonight.

Forgive me for not having posted yesterday.

Sunday, November 08, 2009

I'm Touched By Your Concern

Well thanks for the outpour of support and concern regarding my exploding head.  One flippin' comment! You all suck!  Except for Freya.  I still like you.

I am typing after having mixed meds with booze.  Probably not a good combo but I only have two hours left to post, and I'm not getting any smarter.

No, my head did not explode, but once again, thanks for asking.  Over the counter meds have carried me through, although the second that they wear off, my eyes darken, my sinuses fill up, and I turn into a puddle of misery.  I'm fun that way.

Anyhow, my day was busy, but not terribly interesting, so I'll leave you with a tidbit from the past:

Pumpkin:  "Why do we have to walk to camp?"

Me:  "Because camp is close by, and driving makes the planet dirty."

Pumpkin:  "What happens when the planet gets dirty?"

Me:  "Well, if it gets too dirty, we won't be able to live here anymore."

Pumpkin, looking concerned:  "So we'll have to live with aliens???"

Thursday, November 05, 2009

Off Switch?

It is day three of laryngitis.  I haven't been able to read Pumpkin her evening story, which has her somewhat annoyed with me.  So as not to be outdone, she came home from school with a plan to teach me a lesson.

"Pumpkin, what did you do at school today?"

"I can't tell you Mommy.  My voice is turned off."

OMG COULD YOU PLEASE SHOW ME WHERE THE SWITCH IS!

If only...

Tuesday, November 03, 2009

Keeping it Positive

The smurglies are still kicking my butt, which is preferable to what they're doing to butts over at the Urban Dictionary, so maybe I shouldn't complain.  I figure that today would be a good day for reflecting on the positive things, rather than the fact laryngitis has been added to my list of ailments.  As it turns out, angrily whispering the phrase, "Shut up or I'll beat you with a stick!", does not qualify me as a dog whisperer.  So yeah, lets look at the good stuff.


Pumpkin actually drew something that looked like something!  Visual arts don't exactly run in the family, but I was starting to imagine myself getting a call from the teacher about Pumpkin's lack of skill:


"Hello, Pumpkin's mom?  I'm concerned about Pumpkin's inability to do anything but scribble."


"Is this a real problem?" 


"Well, she is in grade 9..."


Yeah, so we've gotten over that hurdle.  Out of the blue, she started drawing people.  When I asked her who they were, she replied, "Customers!".  Ok, so we've still got a few quirks to deal with but they seem so minor now!


In other news, I decided to get Chichi the H1N1 vaccine.  I will probably do the same for Pumpkin next week when she is in better health.  Thanks to all the media madness about the mayhem at the vaccination clinics, I went well prepared with an arsenal of snacks, drinks, books, DVDs, and a sense of resignation about how bad my afternoon was going to be.  As it turned out, I was in and out of there in 30 minutes, and that included the 15 minute recovery wait. Kudos to the town of Markham!


Next, on the way home from getting the vaccine, I came up to an intersection where my light had just turned green.  For whatever reason, an elderly lady with a walker decided to cross against the red light in the other direction.  Quickly, the very handsome man in the snazzy sports car in front of me turned on his hazards, abandoned his car, and escorted the lady across the street to safety.  No one honked, no one was hurt.  It's nice to see a little display of humanity every now and again.  It didn't really matter that both the man and his car were pretty, but it does add to the whole Prince Charming effect.  Good karma to you and your family, whoever you are!


And finally, there is NeoCitran.  Good night. 



Monday, November 02, 2009

Smurgly

Smurgly is apparently a Macedonian word that describes how one feels when one is coughing and sneezing up everything under the sun at the tail end of a cold. Do NOT look it up in the Urban Dictionary as they have a different definition that I would NEVER speak of on this site, or in every day conversation for that matter. I never would have thought of it, actually. I do realize that I provided the link, but don't look it up. Really. I was innocently doing a quasi spell check when I stumbled onto it. But I digress.

There is somewhat of a plague upon my house right now. Pumpkin had 'a' flu last week, which was, according to much of the media madness, 'that' flu, given that it is too early for it to be seasonal flu. We quarantined her in the guest room for a few days, where she watched more TV than anyone should be willing to admit to. Her doctor had no time to see us, and the walk-in clinics and ER's would have been insane, so I kept her home and watched her. She was her usual self most of the time, so we just weathered it out with a bottle of Motrin. Since she was fever-free by Saturday, I did take her trick or treating, but left Chichi home with hubs, just to extend their time apart. Just as well, since a 16 month old in a Winnie the Pooh costume would have scored me about 20,000 calories that I probably wouldn't have shared. So does anyone want a free baby-sized Winnie costume? It's only been used for a 5 minute photo opp.

Anyhow, now that we are past fevers and barking coughs, we seem to all be somewhat smurgly from a cold that followed suit. Looks like it's going to be a long winter.