Rough

It's been a rough week. We got back from Canada Sunday afternoon, which was a great trip but unpacking is always an ordeal. So I haven't done it yet. I've been too busy going from crisis to crisis to even think about things like unpacking. Someone has peed someone's bed every day, so there's been a lot of sheet-washing. My kitchen was a disaster. I hadn't showered in three days. It was bad. For starters, I came down with a nasty head cold Sunday afternoon, luckily not until after we'd finished visiting the Vancouver aquarium(which I have some good pictures of for later). By the time we got home I was pretty much non-functional. Monday we took a sick day, the boys and I staying in our pajamas all day long. Early Tuesday morning, Jack's cold took a turn for the worse. He'd crawled into our bead around five, burning up and coughing. I gave him Motrin, plugged in the humidifier and tried to fall back asleep. No luck. By 7:30, Jack was whimpering in pain. Aaron had already gone to work, so I called him to see if he could come home to be with Matteas while I took Jack to the walk-in clinic. They open at nine, and we got there by 9:10. There were already eleven other people waiting. My concern was, we've been here before. I'd prefer to spend three hours in the waiting room(which we did) in the morning than drive to the ER in the middle of night, and my hope was to leave with some medicine which we could have on hand just in case. We did, but it was the wrong kind of medicine. The Dr. prescribed albuterol, which is really more of an asthma-type medication and didn't do anything to help Jack's croup. I decided to sleep with Jack so I could hear how he was breathing, so I made us a cozy bed in the basement. He fell asleep but his breathing was pretty labored, and I felt on edge. I could tell we were walking the line between ok and not ok, and things were going to go one way or the other pretty fast. I'd opened the windows and turned on the fan to get the air nice and cool, I'd given him Motrin and Tylenol, but it wasn't enough. He woke up in a panic at 4 a.m. crying "I don't feel good, I don't feel good," and I knew it was time. I woke Aaron up and told him I was taking Jack to the ER, threw some shoes on and headed out. On the two-minute drive there, Jack coughed so much he barfed all over himself. I hadn't brought extra clothes, and for once in my life since having children I didn't have any wipes in the car. I did have a pair of dirty socks, so I did the best I could with those but he was still kind of stinky. Just like last time, we were immediately walked into a room. We had the same nurse even, who was kind of condescending and administered chewable medication to Jack with her bare hands without washing them first. Then she gave him a shot, again without washing her hands or wearing gloves. Seriously? I was not comforted to note that a used tourniquet was on the floor next to Jack's bed. Steven's is pretty ghetto when it comes to their ER, but they're close and they got the job done. We got home around 7 a.m. and I got a few hours of sleep before Matteas woke up. Jack slept until almost noon, and woke up breathing normally and feeling much better. He must have been a little out of it though, because somehow he managed to poop in his nighttime diaper(which he never, ever does) and then neglect to tell me about it until he got into the bath with poop all over himself. He reported that there was a "poo smudge" in the bath. That was a lie. There was a gigantic turd smeared all over him, the bath, the garbage can, and the couch where he'd been sitting before the bath. Again I avoided unpacking, and the rest of the afternoon went pretty much like that, one disaster after another. I put on a movie for the boys, then went downstairs for some recovery time. I came up 30 minutes later to find the boys "cooking" with my Gene Juarez hair gel, toothpaste, deodorant, milk and tampons. All over the living room. I kind of lost it and commanded the boys not to make one more mess or produce one more bodily fluid for the rest of the day, to which Matteas responded(I am not making this up) "Take it easy." I didn't even know he knew what that meant. It all worked out. I cleaned up the barf. I did laundry. I cleaned the kitchen. I asked Aaron to pick up takeout on his way home from work so the kitchen would actually stay clean. I read to the boys. Then, of his own accord, Jack went to sleep on the couch at 7 p.m. I carried him to bed(which now had clean sheets on it) and came out of his room to find Matteas passed out on the floor of the hallway, so now they are both sleeping. Time to drink wine with my husband and catch my breath. I'll unpack tomorrow. Or not.