Hospital vs. Junior High

What could make you want to repeat junior high? Does anyone want to? I was the new girl, we'd just moved from California. It was the '80s. I just got braces. Nothing is flattering about it or particularly memorable, except for the many embarrassing moments.

This blog helps me remember some of the things I would otherwise forget, whether I want to or not. The rest of the days spent in the hospital this week are already a bit of a blur. William spent most of it either in a morphine induced sleep or trying to manage the pain while awake. He did manage to briefly sneak out of his room with his medical student buddy, Josh, to play the Wii in the All-Stars room for 30 min. (A room for older kids to play video games or be on the computer.) Technically he probably shouldn't have left his room since his immune system is not fully recovered, but it was one of those things I just let slide for the mental well being of us both.

Each day we had hopes it would get easier. It didn't. Each day something different decided to make life complicated. And keep in mind that the infusions ran through the night, so most hiccups involved waking up. The infusions were often paused for an hour or two to administer albumin (blood product) and/or additional fluids. He received a blood transfusion one day before the infusion started in an effort to get ahead of the blood pressure issues. Unfortunately, we still had issues that night. He often hit temperatures just over 103 degrees. The toughest part was managing his pain during the night because he wasn't pushing his morphine button in his sleep. Imagine that! The nurses would usually give him an additional bolus of morphine during the night and in the morning as needed.

By Tuesday, William stopped eating except for sips of apple juice to take with his Tylenol and some watermelon at lunch time. He couldn't even be tempted with Jamba Juice. One afternoon his doctor came in and saw him with his watermelon and laughed saying, "No wonder you're not gaining any weight! Where are the calories?" William actually gained 5 pounds in the hospital, but it was all fluid retention and it has since disappeared...as well as 3 more additional pounds from not eating for nearly 5 days.

Thursday was a lovely day. The morning began with vomit, not a typical side effect to this treatment. But it was nice of William to do his best to add excitement to the day, my birthday. That evening, my boys called to sing me "Happy Birthday" and I had to hang up on them. I'm horrible, but it had nothing to do with my mood for spending the day in the hospital. Then my husband called back to see what was wrong and I had to hang up on him too. William had just woken up in a delusional fit and was sobbing. He insisted he needed a sticker right away. He wanted the kind he got when he arrived (he hadn't received a sticker when arriving). He was mumbling a bunch of nonsense, his fever was high, his heart rate racing, and the nurse and I were trying to figure out what he needed. She went and found a Snoopy bandaid and William insisted I hurry and put it on his hand. I did and he suddenly relaxed and all was fine. The boys were all in bed when I finally had a chance to call back. Memorable day.

William and I arrived home Friday night just after the rest of the family had left for the Father and Sons camp out. William and I were excited to have a quite house so we could sleep and rest. Unfortunately, neither of us slept well as my body was freakishly used to waking throughout the night and William was still waking with some residual nerve pain. I spent Saturday cleaning and starting laundry and getting ready for 5 dirty, tired boys to return from camping.

Today, Sunday, any associated pain from the treatment seems to have ended. He started eating a little, but only enough to continue causing me stress that it wasn't enough. I had to put on my tough mom, you're-still-my-son-with-the-same-expectations-as-before hat and tell him he had to eat 4 bites of lasagna before he could leave the table. This was a very lenient expectation compared to what I was enforcing with the others. He sat in his chair and cried and worked himself up until he suddenly threw up. I cleaned him up and said he was done. Then he asked dad if he could have some candy. Dad said sure. What? Was he not sitting at the table through this whole ordeal? He was obviously not thinking, right? I piped in rather quickly and not very amused and said, "No way. But you can have more lasagna." He declined and left the room. I'm bad cop today. A while later I agreed to make him one of my high calories milkshakes, but only because I'm desperate to get some nutrition in him. It is really hard to navigate parenting with a smart, sick child and very smart siblings soaking it all in too.

One day I'll look back on all this and have a lot of mixed emotions. I always thought repeating junior high would be an awful punishment, but I think I'd rather repeat junior high than this. I could change so much about junior high to make it better, but I'm not sure what I could change here to make it better. Like junior high, it's just one of those tough things in life we just have to get through and some how, down the line in life, we're better people.