Catch-Up.

Random fact of the day: In my world where everything has horrible germs on it, and I can't touch anything, I like to delude myself that germs cannot live on paper or cloth. Sometimes it's all that gets me through in life. I try to force myself to not wash my hands after touching papers that people have handed me, or to die a thousand deaths at sorting through some clothes someone donated to me (OK OK I STILL HAVE TO WASH AFTER THAT SECOND PART). But knowing that germs are everywhere, I still like to pretend they're not on fabric or paper. It gets me by, thinking those are safer to touch than, say, doorknobs and toilet flushers and restaurant menus and EVERYTHING ELSE IN THIS GODFORSAKEN WORLD. I like to think paper and cloth/fabric can't harbor germs. Even though I know I'm wrong. But let me enjoy my fantasy world.

This holds true except for USPS mail. After I open my mail I wash my hands with a quickness. Because, that's shit's been from New Jersey to Texas to Portland to Seattle and touched by millions of bum-bum germs and I can't have that.

But since you can't soak books in bleach before reading (yea though I've given this much thought and have attempted to perfect a scenario in which this is plausible), I have to take my chances and just bite the bullet and go for it and OMG TOUCH THINGS SOMETIMES.

---

In other news, Maya is back in Pre-K, and she's taking swimming lessons the same day, so our Mondays and Thursdays are really super busy. Stresses me out, the getting up early and the wrangling two kids just to get Maya home from school (unbuckling the giant heavy baby from her mystery carseat contraption just to take her inside for 340 second to pick up my big girl, the load everyone up, sani some hands, then go home and have Maya take off her shoes, strip down to her nudey pants--

--and wash her hands and wash my hands and use hand-sani again, and clean the baby and clean the lunchbox and just generally disinfect. Coming home from anywhere it far more complicated and stressful than packing up to go OUT, even though going out means loading up the entire house and the proverbial kitchen sink. Because coming home means there has to be a system in place whereby the kids' shoes are off and clothes are off and hands and clothes are cleaned immed before they touch anything. It's touch to wrangle--it's hard with just two kids--how do OCDers with more kids handle it?

Plus, Maya is a major nail-biter and always has her fingers in her mouth. I've trained her well not to touch her eyes or nose, but she bites her nails on the constant. Her fingers are always in the mouth. This makes kitty angry.

 So surely cold and flu germs are having a party in there, all up in her mouth from her grody nails. Good times.

As for swim class, it's driving my nuts. Maya has a good time just bobbing about in the ass soup bum-bum chowder water, but there's got to be more than taking one turn every 6 kids just to take one around a very small swimming zone, with no real instruction (the instructors just carry the kids through the water basically). I look at it like, it's a chance to get poor stifled Maya out of the house and do something that she enjoys, but I can't help wish we were getting our money's worth. They also scam us on time--classes are half an hour but we're lucky to get 20 minutes of time out of it, split among a whole bunch of kids. You can only spend so much tie going over "What's a pool rule?" (where the kids have no idea what he's even asking) or being asked "How do we use a paddle board, to we sit on it? Do we ride it like a horse? Nooooo!" before the kids are finally asked to jump in. And he doesn't teach kids to jump far without help (he underestimates their bravery), or to bob underwater, or other important things. I want some technique taught, and I'm not finding it. Oh well. We'll give it a few more tries before deciding whether to continue.

Either way, having Pre-K and swim on the same day is stressful to the max. I am a person who does not like to have anything on my schedule, anything looming in the future, appointments, dates with friends, doctors, etc. I look at my schedule and see flu shot vax appointments, routine vax appointments, play dates, coffee with a good friend, school, swim, and an upcoming birthday to plan, and I get really overwhelmed. I know I should be able to take this day by day, moment by moment, but I get so caught up in the overwhelmitude.

I just feel like I'm not equipped to deal with daily life. I mean, daily life means getting up early, getting breakfast going, packing lunches, taking the kids to school or playdates, trying to squeeze in the baby's nap, running errands, picking up Maya from school, usually making a Starbucks run for her for a kids' hot chocolate (because she's spoiled like that), and oh yes, cleaning this endless pit of a house that I cannot stay on top of. For someone who panics easily, it's tough to want to do anything or go anywhere, but when I give into that, that's just perpetuates the evil cycle of isolation and loneliness and depression. Then I just stay at home more or want to cancel every appointment on the book or whatever.

I fully expected life to get a little more assbutt difficult after Maya started Pre-K, and I'm trying to take it in stride, but the very moment that Maya comes home with the stomach flu or rotavirus H1N1, my first instinct will be to withdraw her from school again. Which I can't. It's not an option this time. Kid's gotta go to school. Mama has to suck it up.

So I guess we're in for it. A year or two of sick ALL the time,

Gotta put in my big-girl panties and buck up. But it's just so hard. I live with constant stress that eats away at my at night and makes me wake up at 4 am thinking 23749023709432 thoughts, none of which I can really control, but all of which upset me anyway. I'm a work in progress, but I sure as shit hope to see some progress soon.

If I Come Down With The Hooping Cough, Blame My Headache.

I've been having headaches for a month straight. Last night it got so bad, I went...DUN DUN DUN...


...To the ER.


I know right? In the words of one Travis Bickle: "All the animals come out at night - whores, skunk pussies, buggers, queens, fairies, dopers, junkies. Sick, venal."

So it took a lot to get me to go to the doctor after hours.

But my headache was That Bad.

So my husband takes me to our local ER, and while checking in, some guy in front of me is coughing. Mad coughing. Like, hysterical-coughing.

The receptionist hands the man a face mask and says he has to use it. He says, "Why?" She says, "Because you are actively coughing." Actively? More like hysterically. He says, "I cain't breev thoo no face max."  She says, "Sir, you have to wear this face mask. You are actively coughing." He holds it like two inches from his face and says loudly, "I CAIN'T BREEV THOO IT. I CAIN'T WEAR NO MAX." She insists he wears it, so he holds it somewhere in the general vicinity of his head and goes to sit down.

At this point, I am so flustered, so stricken with dread, that my eyesight narrows into tunnel vision and I literally started shaking and couldn't follow directions like "Sign your name at the bottom and date it." I ask, "What's today? What time is it?" because I don't know. Because there was a man HYSTERICAL-COUGHING ALL UP IN HERE. Whooping, if you will.

They tell me to have a seat. I pick a seat as far away from the hysterical-coughing man as I can. I sit down. My head is agony. My nerves are shot. I am cursing the very moment that I decided this apparent brain tumor required medical assistance. I start crying. Hysterically crying, you might say. I take out my hand-sani and use it, while sitting there sobbing, snot and red eyes and blotchy face and all. Ugly crying.

I rub the Bath & Body Works red-apple-scented hand-sani in ferociously, because it is all I can do. I cry. I cry because of my Headache of Doom, but also because there are sick people everywhere.

Fairly soon, thank God, I am taken to a private room. I say private, but of course what I mean is, a room with a billowing sheet hanging 'twixt me and the entire world. The nurse says she will be right with me.

I listen to the conversation happening outside the door billowing sheet. Then I hear it. The words I was desperate not to hear.

Whooping Cough.

The man they just brought in next door has motherfucking whooping cough. I knew it. I called it. The man what would not wear no got-damn face max. Has whooping cough. Super.

So as I lie there, trying to explain myself to an ENTIRE PANEL of doctors, who are grilling me, dissecting my every word ("Well was the pain sudden, or did it worsen over time? You first said it got worse as the day progressed, but now you're using the words 'sudden pain'--which is it??") as if I were just looking for a quick fix of morphine.

Eventually, they give me a shot of Imitrex in my shoulder. Now as you recall, I have a Liver of Steel. (Prior to this, at home, I'd tried a couple of leftover narcotics, colloquially known as The Good Stuff, but it didn't even touch the pain. It never does.) So I wasn't expecting Imitrex to work.

It didn't.

Forty-five American minutes later, they come by to check on me. They decide to give me THREE MORE SHOTS. Two painkillers (a certain kind that deals with nerve pain or something), plus one shot to offset the side effect of the first two shots. Siiiiiiiiiiiigh. The shots hurt almost worse than my headache.

Oh, and somewhere in here I get an MRI of my head. Bygones.

At last the medications have taken the edge off. My husband is allowed to take me home, under the doctor's orders that I get peace, quiet, and a cool dark room.

....BWAHAHHAHA!! SHYEAH RIGHT! I got two kids, honey.

Anyway, that was my big giant ordeal last night. And let's hope they process my insurance right this time, so I'm not billed for a claim + interest that they screwed up FIVE YEARS AGO.

And fingers crossed that I don't come down with The Hooping Cough. If I do, it's all because I had a really bad headache. :(

NOW GO GET YOUR FUCKING TDAP BOOSTER. 

Cherry, Bubblegum, or Varicella Flavor?

PHOENIX (KPHO) -
Doctors and medical experts are concerned about a new trend taking place on Facebook. Parents are trading live viruses through the mail in order to infect their children.


My BFF Mandi recently brought this to my attention. People are sending viral infections in the mail. Viral Infections. In the Mail. Motherfucking viruses in the USPS motherfucking mail. Varicella (chickenpox), to be specific. Some people are actually attempting this for measles, mumps, and rubella. Why, God, why? We have vaccinations against these, people! Vaccinations!!

It's like, "here's your 2011 newsy newsletter, the kids are all right, here's what we've done the past year, little Janie is off to school, oh, and here's a snotwad lozenge of rubella. No big."

They are mailing tainted lollipops, wet rags, and clothing, all covered with saliva and the like, whereupon you let your child suck away to his heart's content on a herpes-zoster pop (MMM) or perhaps scrub a nice wet rag covered with mump and pox debris all about your previous poor poor mump- and pox-free person.

My horror is so great I can't even.

Now, I'm sure a lot of you have heard of chickenpox parties, where one kid has chickenpox and mothers choose to get their kids together with the sickie to expose their chidren young so that they get their kids catch the virus and get it over and done with as children, when it's less likely to be dangerous. (The virus can be pretty vile if you catch it as an adult.) There are wildly mixed feelings on this, but it's a pretty old-fashioned idea, especially now that there's a vaccine. Although I confess, this partic'alar one was the hardest decision I made as a vaccinating mother.

Now, the vaccine of course is imperfect. Not only can there be (very very rare) complications like it as with any vaccine, but it doesn't guarantee your child will never catch chickenpox. It just drastically cuts down on any severe case or horrible, life-threatening reaction. Dr. Swanson says "We’re giving the shot to prevent the serious, life-threatening complications that can come along with the virus, such as a brain infection or flesh-eating bacteria in the sores."

Mmm. Flesh eating bacteria all because of a simple childhood illness.

Warning. Warning. Click at your leisure, if you have a strong stomach.

I confess, this was the most difficult vaccine for me to come to terms with. I do understand both sides of the equation here. We personally stagger vaccines and delay them, some by weeks or months (MMR), some by years (like Hep and and B), although we DO vaccinate. I was all about the Pertussis vaccine, for example. Whooping cough scares the living shit out of me. The only vaccine we semi-purposely, semi-accidentally we skipped altogether was Rotavirus, because (1) getting a case of the trots didn't seem like a big deal or worth taking any potential vaccine risk; and (2) we accidentally waited too long and Maya couldn't get it anyway (they're supposed to get it before six months old I think, oops). (She still hasn't caught it by age four, I'll have you know.) But we thought long and hard before getting the varicella vaccine, and finally conceded. I mean, who wants their kid to get a raging case of chickenpox?

I had a terribly bad case as a tiny two-year-old kid. My mom said I was in agony and would just sit there and shake and quake and writhe and sob, itching so desperately but not knowing what to do with myself because I was too young to know how to scratch. Any chance I have to reduce the chances of my child going through that, I'll take. And if she didn't get lifelong immunity and needs a booster in 10 years? Who the fuck cares? If that's the main problems with the varicella shot, that (1) it's not a 100% guarantee and (2) you'll need boosters, wowee, big whoop. And some people say that it sets you up for being prone to getting shingles later in life. I'll have you know what I had about the worst natural case of the pox I could possiblty have and only a few months ago, I broke out in the dreaded shingles. So you never know. It's all kind of a crapshoot, but I erred of the side of protecting my kidlets.

I REPEAT: I don't even want my kids licking "clean" saliva off a lollipop. what has this world come to?

Anyway, I digress.

It's totally up to you whether you want to get the vaccination or not. I understand both sides. But you might want to skip the tainted-lollipop 2001 Chickenpox Internet Party approach. Just a word of advice you might want to heed: "It is a federal offense to mail infectious agents in the mail." A FEDERAL OFFENSE, people.

So keep your germ-lollies to your self. Criminy. It's on par with sending Anthrax through the mail. Would you ever do that? I didn't think do. So listen. I don't even want my child to suck on your pristine disease-FREE saliva-covered sucker, not to mention your sucker covered in a viral infection. So please keep your herpes zoster and your rubella to your DAMN selves, thxusovmuch.