Wednesday, November 23, 2005

My kid's on steroids


It's the day before Thanksgiving.
I have turkey to de-giblet, bread to shred for stuffing, pumpkin pies to bake, vegetables to trim and prepare for cooking and hor d'oeurves...long list short, I have lots of pre-Thanksgiving things to do today - not to mention the cleaning, bathroom scrubbing, vacuuming and decorating that needs to be finished ASAP.
Suffice it to say, it is now 2:30 pm and I have gotten to exactly zero of the things on my to-do list...and you're saying to yourself..."Hmm I wonder why?"

Cut to 1 am last night/this morning, your choice.
Elizabeth shows up in our room half asleep. She wakes me up by croaking out "Apple juice, please"
It sounds like she had smoked three packs of cigarettes in her sleep. Just horrible.
She gets up into our bed and I give her apple juice which she chugs.
She coughs and it sounds like a barking seal. I am tired, but not too tired to realize that my kid has croup.
This morning, I call her doctor who fits her into his schedule of pre-Thanksgiving holiday appointments. He confirms my mother's instinct diagnosis of croup.
The barking seal agrees.
He prescribes Agnes "Seal Bark" Marlboro some sort of steroid that helps keep her throat from closing up, a good idea if ever I've heard one.
I load Her Sickness back up into the car (oh did I mention, she's in PJs and slippers, in town!) and head to the Walmart pharmacy.
They don't have the medicine, so we have to go across the street to Walgreens. They DO have the medicine, but I DON'T have her insurance card, which means I either have to pay for the medicine out of pocket or drive the half hour back home, search frantically for the card and drive the half hour back. Thank goodness the pills were only $12. It made my decision very easy.
Add in two humidifiers, and some cold medicine for myself - since of course, I am sick now too - and I drop a cool $33 at Walgreens. Yeah, that's right, I got the humidifiers on a crazy sale and saved $5 each! Not bad!
We're back home now. It's very steamy in our house, we have THREE humidifiers going at once.

I had to take all 13 (YEP THIRTEEN) steroid pills, crush them up and mix them into Banana Cream Pie flavored yogurt to get them into Elizabeth. She was starting to catch on to the slightly off, slightly crunchy texture of the yogurt and quit eating it halfway through, luckily I mixed most of the pills into just the top inch or so of yogurt. AND she's such a yogurt-head, she'll forget the unpleasantness soon and come back for the rest.
Hopefully her daddy will feel like tending to her crazy sickness tonight so I can shred bread and bake some pies so I'm not totally slammed tomorrow. He's also going to be cleaning a bathroom...he doesn't know this yet...shhhh.
The best news of all is that Bob is sick too, and he's WORSE than she is...it's not just a man-bashing stereotype in our house, he is the biggest baby of the house when it comes to sickness. Thank goodness there will be football on to occupy them both and keep them out of my hair.
We're going to be quite the family portrait at tomorrow's dinner!
Happy Thanksgiving!
Yahoo!

2 comments:

cube said...

Hope your Thanksgiving went well despite the Thanksgiving Eve calamities. I don't how in the world you do it all.

Is Miss Seak Bark feeling better today?

Jessica said...

Thanksgiving went great! The next day, Bob couldn't take his face being swelled up anymore and we took him to the emergency room where we found out he has an abscessed tooth (after it exploded! ew!) and he has to get it removed.
And we don't have any dental insurance.
Needless to say, we are THRILLED!
Him more than me I think, since they'll be pulling bones out of HIS face and not mine!
Good times!