Lets play catch up.
Abbys health: It was a rough winter for Abigail. She was illness free all of two weeks from January to May. The rest of the winter she had a bone rattling cough and a double ear infections.
Listen to this cough. This is the worst thing I've ever heard. I'd listen to Fran Drescher sing the entire Kid Rock catalogue before this cough. It pained us every time she went into a fit. There was nothing we could be but try and calm her down, then worry. Abigail felt like this for months. Terrible.
Cheeks ended her first Easter in the hospital with Pneumonia. She'd been sick all week, we thought she sounded terrible and the urgent care clinic agreed. We decided we needed to take Abby to urgent care after dinner at my folks house. Not knowing where we our day was headed I gorged myself as is my easter tradition (its a holiday I honor everyday). This is not a sound strategy for a night at a hospital. Instead of passing out in a chair I fought back deviled egg burps while talking to an emergency doctor. If I've learned anything from Abbys health problems, its that if you burp deviled eggs into your doctors face your room will be a recently converted utility closet.
Abby was a trooper at the hospital. She's been a champ throughout all of her illnesses.The only thing she knew was sickness. The fact that she resigned herself to feeling terrible depressed me. She'd cough, look up at me with tired puffy eyes and shrug her tiny shoulders. "Hey Dad, this is life and life sucks."
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| sick sick sick |
The children's hospital emergency room is never a happy place, but it has to take on a special grimness on a holiday. People dressed in their sunday best sitting next to wailing, sick or bloody children. One of the things we discovered at the children's hospital is that there may need to be a looser definition of child. The patient across the hall from us was in his early teens and getting his shoulder popped back into place. It was Kenny Powers muppet babies. "AAHHHHH YOU ************ IMMA CUT YOUR **** OFF YOU AHHHHH MOMMA **** THIS ****** ***** DONT TOUCH ME AGAIN YOU ***** OH **** YOUR ICE CREAM ************." The poor kid sounded like he was in tremendous pain, but he was cursing just beautifully in a prepubescent high pitched voice and it was killing me. I wasn't laughing at his pain. I was laughing at his art. One of the few things I'm good at in life is cursing. If you can make me blush you should graduate to the regular hospital.I tip my hat to this vulgar Shakespearean tadpole.
Also, one of the medications they put her on made he stool look like red velvet cake. That was interesting. Dark red velvety stool. It made it look like Abby had a chest burster alien gestating in her stomach. I wonder how often they forget to give warning about the side effects, leading parents to sprint the emergency sure their baby just crapped out a kidney.
Abigail was released from the hospital after a day of treatment. The doctors referred us to an ENT for the ear infections and a pulmonologist for her cough.
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| Go home, you're both too pretty for the hospital. |
Abigail has failed her hearing tests because of fluid behind her ears. The ENT said they have to assume she has hearing loss until she proves them wrong. I understand this, it makes sense. That doesn't make it less terrifying. "We're going to assume your house is burning down until you get home and its not". "We're going to assume you got fired until you get to work and your badge works." Oof.
The first step to proving them wrong was getting tubes in her ears. The fluid behind her ears was thick, she was really sick. We've noticed a big improvement in her mood since the tubes were put in, she's more vocal and seems to be able to actually hear us. She goes in for a new hearing test this week, we're hoping she proves them wrong.
The pulmonologist has been treating her cough with allergy medication, breathing treatments and an inhaler. The treatments have made a big difference, but she hates them. Gassing her has never been easy, its almost impossible now that she's 18 pounds of wiggling fury. Hopefully we can ween her off of the treatments as the summer goes along.
Development: She's catching up to the punctual babies in almost every area. They want her to be at least at -2 months on all her developmental goals, so at the last check up they looked for her to be at 6 months. She was at 8, her actual birth date. Fantastic. She's catching up in weight and height, her head continues to grow at superhuman rates.
She's crawling, she's sitting up, her teeth coming are in. Fun. She doesn't want to be held, she wants to be on the ground causing trouble. I was playing with her on her xylophone today and it occurred to me that this kid was really damn boring up until two months ago. Always cute, always loved but kind of boring. What was a nice art installation has turned into this fun badass kid. She's chasing the dogs all over the living room, bullying them out of their favorite spots. Their quite life of leisure is over. If she had been born on time she'd be king of the babies. A mad, bulbous cheeked tyrant ruling polk county babies with chubby iron fists. Generalissimo Cheeks.
The teeth make her dangerous, two on the bottom and fangs on the top. I was playing with her yesterday and she bit down on one of my fingers. If I had been asleep I would have woke up with a bloody nub where my index finger used to be. The fangs are impressive. She either wants to taste dog flesh or is really excited about True Blood coming back next week.
She's feeling better. She's playful and talkative. She's happy, we're happy. Everyone is happy except the dogs, who are just looking for a place to lay down in peace.
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| Im going to play you a song about feeling good |
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