Gilde Sanitarium

Abigail has been sick for the last week.What started as a cough progressed to a bad cough that then turned into a bad cough with an ear infection. The Tanks treads have come off and its taking us longer than we'd hoped to get rolling along.

I don't feel good. Mess with me and die.

The cough came on slow, a chirp she barely noticed. Two days later it was a roar, a malicious sound that was too big, too angry to be coming from her tiny body. She coughed until she threw up. She coughed herself awake at night. She coughed herself awake in the morning.

Waking up at night has been rough. She's been a great sleeper and we're now spoiled. We're no longer battle tested, sleep deprived parents. We're soft. She's slept so good for so long I don't know how to deal with waking up. It is killing us, slowly and painfully. I stood in front of the refrigerator at work for five minutes last week before I realized I originally went to the back to make copies. Two more weeks of this and there will be a lean cuisine jamming our fax machine.

The coughing spells that dont wake her up are somehow worse. An extended coughing fit at two in the morning that ends abruptly and leaves complete silence, that's the sort of thing that makes me break out in a cold sweat. I'm never able to go back to sleep when this happens. I have to sneak into the room, try and detect her breathing, then sneak out without waking her. Dumb, but the mind goes to ridiculous places at 3 in the morning. I imagine Abigail laying there like Mama Cass, furious that someone gave a ham sandwich to a baby with a chest cold.  Its asinine but I have to go see that she's ok.

The doctor ordered albuterol treatments to help with cough. I pictured an inhaler, a little tube we held up to her mouth twice a day that would cure her with no fuss, no fighting. What we actually received was a  machine that looks like its used to commit war crimes. Its a gas mask, vials of liquid and a machine that sounds like a large electrical generator at war with itself. When put together, the gas mask coughs out an ominous white smoke while the machine that powers it roars in the background.  Abigail is justifiably wary of this devil machine, I have to restrain her the entire time I'm gassing her. If I ever join a cult I have a catchy first bullet for my resume.

This is how Darth Vader started out

Two days later she's still fussy, still fighting her robot nurse and now running a temperature. The 101.7 degree temperature seemed high to me so we called after hours care. After listing Abigail's symptoms, the multiple doctors office visits and her current treatment the doctor yawned and advised to come in the morning. When I asked about Abigails temperature, about how high it should get I start to freak out, the doctor told me 105. 105! If I check her tomorrow and she's at 103 I'm throwing her in a cooler full of ice and redlining the civic all the way to the emergency room.

The third doctors visit that week revealed that her chest cold turned into an ear infection. Thankfully this treatment is bubblegum flavored antibiotics that she loves. Much easier than baby gassing.

I hope the ear infection is a childhood thing and I didn't curse her with my inner ear problems as this same thing happens to me every time I get sick.  Mary passed on her messed up toes, I possibly passed on my tiny eustachian tubes. I fear she may be cursed to a life of constant ear infections, dizziness and ill fitting shoes.

 Sorry sweetheart!

Bad genes and sick,still looking fabulous