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illness

Leki

Wednesday 12 October 2016

Our family seems to be a blended family in one sense: immunity to illness. It seems I never really get sick. K said the other day that she thought she could probably count all the times I’ve been really sick — not just feeling a little bad and going to bed early one night — during our marriage. Unfortunately, the reverse is not true: it seems that K makes up for my relative lack of illness.

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So we were both a little curious regarding who would most influence our children’s genetics in this regard. Obviously, the best case scenario would have been to take my immune system in its entirety and leave K’s behind. Equally obviously, the worse case scenario would be the opposite.

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The obvious happened: the kids got a bit of both, probably making them fairly normal.

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Sick Saturday

Saturday 24 May 2014

The Boy always stays sick. Or is it a dairy allergy? At any rate, he’s always coming down with something, and so when we took him to the doctor ten days ago, this weekend’s plans wobbled just a little: “He might not be up to camping,” K said. I was optimistic, though: “He’ll get better.” But as he was getting better, K started feeling worse. “Perhaps you and L can go on the camping trip instead of all four of us,” she suggested. Then Wednesday, L returned home from school feeling positively awful and slept from four to seven, then went back to bed at nine and slept till seven the next morning. Three out of four, that meant only one thing: Tata has to step up his game.

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Cleaning, diaper changing, cut bandaging, medicine dosing — I usually miss these things on a spring Saturday morning. This or that gardening/hardware/tool store is calling, or the lawn beckons, or the Leyland cypresses stretch out to remind me they need a trimming. It’s always something. This morning, though, it was just an ever-running laundry, new adventures with a fussy son, a cat in the laundry basket, and cold coffee.

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Enough to make me appreciate again all the things that K accomplishes inside while I’m outside on a Saturday.

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By the early afternoon, the kids had both rebounded almost fully. The Boy and I went on a little field trip while L was up the street at a friend’s house. By the evening, K was once again exhausted — she insisted on cooking dinner — and the kids were tired from their newly-rediscovered outside freedom.

Sick at Home, Tired at Rehearsal

Thursday 15 May 2014

The Boy, in one form or another, stays sick lately. Or so it seems. Today was my turn to watch him, to take him to the doctor, to help him with his newly-prescribed breathing treatment. We started the morning playing with cars on the sofa. It ended quickly.

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That was the morning. Afternoon and evening were spent in an auditorium as the Girl prepared for her two (count them: two) dance recitals coming up, jazz and ballet. I took my little laptop along with the intention of returning to a recent writing idea that seems promising but got off to a wrong-footed start that I only really realized how wrong-footed 25,000 words into it. While writing, though, two random thoughts:

Random Thought One

The girls running across the stage, somewhat stumbling occasionally, reveal the irony of grace: in learning to be graceful, we’re often anything but. We watch a professional company’s performance of the Nutcracker, and the dancers seem positively to float across the stage. The lifts look more like the man his keeping the ballerina from soaring of into space rather than supporting her. These little girls look more like kids in the playground playing cowboys and Indians, galloping about like mad, than like ballerinas–when judged against that standard of near-perfection that professionals seem to achieve. But grace and elegance comes in many forms and is in itself somewhat relative. After seeing how spastic L can be, in the completely natural, seven-year-old way, it’s an act of supreme grace just for her to tiptoe onto the stage, hands on her hips, and slide gently into first position.

Random Thought Two

I once made the analogy with a professor that for me, faith was like watching people dance from a sound-proof chamber. “I see the unity, the ritual, the sequence, but not hearing the music myself, I only suspect what is choreographing it all.” Dr. R said that was a very positive view, and perhaps he thought then what it took me almost twenty years to figure out for myself: my professed atheism might give way to something more musical.

During the last few months, I’ve experienced the opposite: while sitting in the Greenville Ballet and Jazz waiting room as L took her weekly lesson on Monday afternoons, I heard the same song over and over. A few moments here, then stop; a few more snippets of the song, then silence again. Muffed voices as the instructor presumably corrected this or that dancer, perhaps the group as a whole. I had no idea what the whole might look like. While waiting for L’s group’s performance, it finally all came together: an older group of girls, probably just a bit older than my students.

Back home, I check on the song, apparently a band called Capital Cities:

The Girl got a little snack while the Boy got a final breathing treatment.

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Busy, random, odd day.

Morning Light

Tuesday 28 January 2014

Morning Window

In the mid-80’s, when I was a young teen, my uncle’s doctors discovered that he had highly advanced kidney cancer — so advanced that they said there was nothing they could do. Six weeks or so later, I was a pallbearer at his funeral. It was quite a shock for the family, for he was just in his early fifties, and it all happened so quickly.

Yet, looking back and considering the number of cigarettes he smoked daily and the number of years he continued the habit, it’s not entirely unexpected. Actions have consequences; those consequences in turn often lead to still other repercussions.

One of these was the almost-continual driving back and forth from our home in Virginia to the hospital in South Carolina that was treating my uncle. It was summer; I was out of school and my father was taking time off work, so the three of us went back and forth, spending the weekends and other occasional days sitting in the waititng room or by my father’s brother’s bedside. I spent a good bit of my time reading Stephen King, skateboarding in the parking lot, and walking to the Hardee’s down the street for something sweet to drink.

I didn’t like hanging out in my uncle’s room, mainly for selfish reasons. It was stressful walking down the hall, seeing all the aged and decrepit (little did I know) patients, their rooms open, their eyes following every visitor as we walked by their doors. Additionally, the odors were, to my immature nose, offensive and probably unnecessary. So little did I know of death and dying; so little do I know now, but at least I understand its natural elements a little better.

In some ways what bothered me most was seeing my father helpless. It was obvious in his voice and countenance that this was one of the most trying experiences of his life. He was constantly asking his brother if he need anything: another pillow, the television on, the blinds closed, the television off, the blinds open. He sat sometimes and wiped his brother’s forehead with a cool cloth and, as far as I recall, said nothing. What could he say?

Snot

Thursday 9 May 2013

Apparently, there are four sinus cavities.

And while that’s three more than I was aware of, they are obviously of a limited volume. Today, though, with the Boy sneezing constantly, they seem more like they’re portals to dimensions in which mucus is the dominant substance. In that dimension, scientists are trying to understand the ever-expanding nature of mucus, its uncanny ability to reproduce seemingly ex nihilo.

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Fortunately, Babies ‘R’ Us provides the solution: a small battery-powered vacuum with nostril-sized tip and lovely clear reservoir that sucks. Literally. Graco, the manufacturer, was also kind enough to design in a little electronic distraction: the push of a second button turns the little snot sucker into a music box vacuum.

And so we fall into a routine:

  1. Sneeze
  2. Grimace at the strands of snot hanging from the nose
  3. Grimace at the approaching Snot Sucker
  4. Realize what the Snot Sucker is doing
  5. Relax

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And of course repeat…

Caught

Tuesday 7 May 2013

The Boy is sick — trapped in the house, in short. Two ears, both infected. Talk of tubes. Worries about effects. We’re all caught, I guess. Home from the doctor this morning, though, there was only one thing catching E: sleep.

Sleeping with Illness

After a fitful night, I was surprised at how long he lasted before the fists began digging in the eyes, before the fussing began, before the first yawn. When he’s sick and fussy, the first morning nap is always a blessing: some coffee, a bit of news on the internet, a chance to catch a moment of calm. But the calm never lasts: I look around and see what a mess a little boy can make in only a couple of hours, and I begin cleaning.

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Soon, I’m interrupted: a terrible squawking and fluttering just outside the kitchen door tells me that we have our first victim of the season in our raspberry bush netting. No matter how carefully I hang the netting, with such deliberate overlaps that I then secure with various extemporaneous methods, it never fails: the birds somehow get in and then, unable to get back out, just about destroy the netting in their panic.

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Last year, I tried various methods, including going into the netting myself with a tennis racket and herding the bird down to a corner where I can then pick it up and carry it out. (I quit doing that soon after an unexpected turn from a bird resulting in a fluttering pile of feathers beneath the berry vines. I suppose I didn’t think things through all that carefully with that method.)

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Eventually, this one finds its way out.

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Not unlike the Boy’s dreams: he is desperate to head out after so much time inside. At dinner, he sees his jacket I left hanging on the back of a chair when we returned from the doctor’s office. He grabs it, smiles at us, and begins waving bye-bye.

Eyes

Monday 21 January 2013

They’re supposed to be the window to our souls, and I find that the more problems a kid in my school might have with social and basic academic skills, the less likely the kid is to look in a person the eyes when speaking to anyone, especially an authority figure. There must be some truth to it, then. Consider also how we often keep them shut to block a slice of reality that is just too difficult to accept.

Sometimes, though, someone or something else closes our eyes. In that case, it can rarely be positive. But it can certainly be positive when these same eyes open, just a bit. Do a Google image search: “eyes slightly open” and you’ll find picture after picture of people lying in hospital beds, various tubes and apparatuses trailing away from the body.

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And it makes sense: those are the times when a slightly opened eye is the most beautiful thing one can imagine.