A flip of the calendar

Alternate title: I am not going to schedule anything for the first couple of days in a month ever again.

Alternate, alternate title: Not how I envisioned my Saturday going.

I've had a couple of friend comment on loving the feeling of flipping the calendar to a new month. Typically, I love the feeling too--starting afresh, a relatively blank slate (though it's a matter of hours before it fills up, but whatever).

So, I menu plan and make my grocery list on Wednesday nights. I was looking through the Publix circular, making notes and decided to check with the calendar to see if hopefully, fingers crossed, pretty-please there was a night we had plans and I didn't need to cook. Lo and behold, I saw that I had signed up to bring a meal to a new mom on Friday night (Oct 1). What in the world was I thinking? I try and make a habit of never cooking on Friday nights! (Kinda joking, kinda not.) Ok, ok, I can handle it, no biggie. Look at Saturday...I was hosting a baby shower. At my house. I had forgotten (how does that happen? This also meant I needed to make a gift and I had a lot of monogramming roll in last week that needed to be done in time for the shower Saturday!). Saturday afternoon we had soccer pictures and a game. Sunday, I had agree to make (and shop for)the white chili (vegetarian and non) for my church lunch.

I'm not gonna lie, a little panic set in.

I went to Publix on Thursday and the rotisserie chickens weren't done so I put in an order for them to hold them for me until that evening, paid for them and went on my merry way. I returned that evening to get them, and they had been sold. I was not amused. I spoke with the management and they assured me that if I called back Friday morning he would personally hold them for me. It took 3 calls on Friday to get that manager on the phone. After the 3rd attempt at getting them, (anyone with kids knows that 3 trips to the grocery store in 2 days is not a desirable situation) I assumed they would throw in some flowers for free, offer me a discount or something. Ya, no. In fact, he rang up the chickens and tried to make me pay for them again. Ugh.

But anyway, I got the meal made Friday (though I forgot to take the guacamole--oops) and the house picked up. Chris was amazing and helped me clean while I made cake bites Friday night. The shower went off without a hitch and I made it to soccer only 3 minutes late. Feeling high from the days' success, I made plans to go to a local pizza place that we love (near a train) and walk around with friends afterwards. As we were driving there I heard Ryan coughing a bit. I commented to Chris that we should probably turn his humidifier on that night. We got to the pizza place, ordered and the kids began eating their applesauce. After Ryan finished, he crawled into Chris' lap (clue # 1 something wasn't right). I could all of a sudden hear him breathing from across the table so I picked him up to hold him and listen. I could feel his chest shaking on his back when he breathed, so when the girl brought our pizza I told her to bring a box and the check. We left immediately and after a useless conversation with Kaiser (why do I even bother?), we headed straight to the children's hospital. (we debated going home since we have a prescription steroid, but ultimately decided it would be best to head to the hospital in case the steroid wasn't enough and we then would have to drive to the hospital.) It was eerily similar to our last trip.

We pulled in and I jumped out and carried Ryan in. By this point his breathing was extremely labored, shallow and loud. I was in line behind a woman with a little girl who had an ear infection and her amoxicillan wasn't working (insert rolling eyes. Really? ER on a Saturday night? Not letting a kid go in front of you who can't breathe?). Ryan was getting worse by the minute and I finally pulled a "mama bear" and said, "I'm not trying to be that mom, but he isn't getting enough oxygen when he's breathing and needs to be seen right now." They looked at him and immediately took him to triage. While in triage, Ryan grabbed his throat and made a noise that I could tell he wasn't getting any air. I asked him if he could breathe and he tried to say no but couldn't and shook his head no. The nurse called the doctor and was reading out Ryans' vitals and telling him which room to meet us in as we ran down the hall. They immediately gave him epinephrine through a nebulizer and he didn't even fight it. They followed it up with an oral steroid and motrin (to combat the 101.6 fever that had instantly popped up from nowhere). After 2 hours he wasn't better (enough) so they gave him another epinephrine treatment and decided to keep him overnight. When we got up to move to the inpatient rooms (from observation) I noticed the sheets were soaked with sweat. I asked the doctor about it and he said that he didn't think it was a fever in regards to virus (etc) but that Ryan's muscles had been in extreme stress trying to get enough oxygen they were working too hard/tensing up (or something like that??). That really scared me.

Since I'm still nursing Jack, Chris came to the hospital to stay with Ryan. I went to the valet to get my car and a mom with 3 teenagers with her (who got there a solid 5 minutes after me) said she was next in line and gave the guy her ticket in front of me. I was too tired to say anything. When it was finally my turn he brought the wrong car. Instead of Chris' 2000 accord he brought a brand new cadillac suv. Anyway, I felt like a horrible mother driving away from the hospital, leaving my baby behind! I came home, cleaned up the kitchen from the shower, fed Jack and made the soup for lunch (thanks to Jonathan for staying with the kids and Leigh-Ann for making the vegetarian chili for me!!). After a shower and folding the pile of laundry on top of my bed, I finally fell asleep at 2 am. I am so tired and so sore.

The bottom line is that in another child this would only manifest in cold like symptoms, but, they believe, Ryan has extra narrow airway passages and until he grows (thus outgrowing the problem) around age 7, this will continue to be a problem for him. They are again trying to push us to do the exploratory surgery , but I just don't see the point of doing a surgery, that requires general anesthesia, when it will only answer questions and not in any way fix the problem. If he doesn't outgrow it by age 7, we would do it because at that point they would do surgery to laser remove scar tissue (from when he was intubated as a newborn when he was first born).

So, there's that.

I took Anna-Kate and Jack to church this morning to drop off the food and just be around people. I was again reminded of the blessing that our church family is. Word had traveled about Ryan and I had so many people asking for updates and telling me they had been praying for him--we are blessed.