Oh the trauma

A few weeks ago I woke up in the middle of the night with terrible stomach pain. I don't just mean regular pain. I mean the kind that makes you long for the day when your benchmark was giving birth without pain medication. Yes kids this was worse than that. I considered dialing 9-1-1 but the phone was pretty far away and I wasn't moving an inch. Sounds pretty lazy of me I know. That's me. Lazy Colleen. Anyway eventually it lessened and I was able to sleep. I debated going to the hospital still but if you can sleep through it then it's not really worthy of a 4:00am ER visit right? Famous last words I know.

So I ended up there at 11:00am instead. There were about 25 people waiting which is down right deserted for this city. I figured I'd have a 4 or 5 hour wait if no emergencies came in while I was there. Well apparently the triage nurse thought I was the emergency and as my butt hit the waiting room chair ready to settle in for the long haul of catching every cold and flu known to mankind and watching a stream of people come and go I heard my name called. I had a bed and an IV before I was even officially admitted as a patient. Guess I should have come in at 4:00am. Sigh.

Because of the stomach pain I was given about as much morphine as I wanted. As I learned this is self limiting because you eventually pass out and can't ask for more anyway. In my case this was every time I got a dose. I'd wake up a few hours later when it started to wear off. I'll never make it as an addict I guess. Such a lightweight.

Lucky for me the third time I came too I woke to find my 80 year old neighbor starting to strip in front of everyone. And when I say everyone I mean the entire ER. She even sang quietly to herself while her diamond earrings bobbed around......and I had the best seat in the house. "Nurse. Morphine....Stat!!" Oh the flashbacks.

Remind me to do myself in before I get to that point....or better yet just put me in a backwards onesie so I can't undress myself. Blah.

As with many things in my life these days I am having to be patient. I was discharged later the same day without many answers as to what caused my pain. I've been waiting for my "urgent" CT scan for two weeks now. Not that I really want to have a second one so soon. For those of you who read my February post called Bacon: a cautionary tale you'll recall how happy I was to have an increased risk of brain cancer from this technology that was supposed to help me feel better. Now I suppose I have double an increased risk....whatever that equals. Isn't health care wonderful? Since I'm waiting for the scan to be scheduled anyway I guess I can use my time to think about naked ER patients. If you hear me crying you'll know why.

Shorter pants

Last night was an interesting and eventful one in our house. We had just arrived home from a few days of camping and I was really looking forward to sleeping in my own bed again. I should also mention that my bed at home has been under attack lately when one of the cats decided that it passed as a second liter box and once that happens the other cat thinks "hey why not?" I was lucky enough to have found a product that gets up pet stains really well after the dog made a very big mess last winter....seems he wasn't feeling well at all. I'll spare you the photos but let's just say it looked like my cream colored carpet had polka dots.....across the entire room. The cleaning spray is amazing. You spray it and walk away. It even says that on the bottle. No hours of scrubbing the carpet until you've given up all will to live. You squirt the stuff on and go make yourself a margarita to drown your sorrows. I don't quite understand how it works but I assume little enzymes go to work and actually eat the organic material. Don't think too hard about what that means when your dealing with cat pee and dog poop. Anyway it took a few applications but it saved my carpet and I had high hopes for my mattress.

Liquid Miracle

So we got home after the weekend only to find that my bed wasn't quite ready for me to sleep on it....but I'm holding out hope it will be soon. In the mean time I've spent the last 2 weeks bunking in the spare bed in Andrew's room. It's not the most comfortable substitute for my pillow top mattress but it beats the couch when you have neck and back problems. So there I was fast asleep last night when I heard something. I slowly opened my eyes to see Camryn's silhouette starring at me. Through tears she told me that both her legs were hurting her.

She limped back to her bed and after some pain killers I laid beside her and massaged her legs. It was probably about an hour before she was back asleep. By then her arms and legs were twisted in mine and I wasn't about to risk waking her to get back to my uncomfortable bed. So there I slept with her and about 25 stuffed animals in a twin bed.

This morning it occurred to me that maybe her painful legs were a growth spurt. So when she finally woke up I had her assume the usual pose against our dining room wall and sure enough she had grown a half an inch overnight. She was pretty excited about that but still not very impressed about the bad night sleep. I can relate. I miss my own bed so much!!

Camryn grew right out of the shot  =)

Trend setter?

Up until recently Andrew relied on me to pick out his clothing in the morning. This was somewhat of a necessity because he would wear shorts in a blizzard if I didn't. You may be tempted to assume that he would choose the shorts because he wanted to be cool or something. In reality Andrew will just grab any top and bottom he can find and put them on. They might not match. They might not fit any longer. They might not work for the weather. I believe that his Autism diagnosis plays a role in this. He knows that he's supposed to put on a top and a bottom in the morning and in his mind he's met that requirement if he is wearing any kind of shirt and any kind of pants or shorts.

So I've tried to be diligent about removing clothing that is either too small or the socks with holes....because he will put those on even if the hole is big enough to put your fist through....true story....and I now hide the shorts in winter time. With all these precautions in place I have been trying to let him pick out his own clothing because this is an important life skill and also something that other kids his age have been doing for several years now.  I try to butt out as much as possible but this week we ended up with a long sleeved rugby shirt with shorts on a scorcher of a day. So now we bring a "just in case" t-shirt with us so he can change when he gets too hot. We've also seen the emergence of a new fashion trend as seen below. All I have to say is that it's a good thing he goes to an Arts school.

Bringing the socks with sandals look back

"Let's talk about infectious disease kids"

The kids and I have been talking about a lot of nasty diseases lately. This wasn't really by choice mind you. It all started a few weeks ago when our provincial government decided that everyone should have to hear and see endless commercials about syphilis. I would like to state for the record that I think it's good to raise awareness particularly right before the start of the Calgary Stampede. For those that are not familiar with the seedy side of this wonderful tourist spectacular I will fill you in. Most bars in or around the Stampede have a "ring check". This is like a coat check service for your wedding ring. Awesome of the bars to help you cheat on your spouse right? Yah. I've heard personal tales of people using port-a-potties for these hook-ups too. I wish I were kidding. Ewww.

So you can imagine that there is a certain demographic of people here who really need to be encouraged to get all kinds of testing done. The fewer people with syphilis or other STD's is great. However the government runs these at all times of the day...on every channel and every radio station. Besides being extremely repetitive I've hated this onslaught for one simple reason. I had to tell my kids what syphilis is. Then being the worrier that he is Andrew thought he could catch it from just about anything. I mean after all they talk about it all the time so in his mind it's everywhere. So then I had to tell the kids how most people catch syphilis. I think it's safe to say that my dream that my children won't have sex until they are 30 just might come true now.

So as if that wasn't enough infectious disease talk already two days ago Andrew develops what I think must be his first pimple. Right there on his nose. Then by morning it had blistered and was looking pretty sore. Then another small cluster of red spots turned into blisters. Hmmm. It was starting to look bad by dinner. I brought him to the walk-in clinic and guess what? It's impetigo and it's highly contagious. Oh goody. At least we figured it out early before it spread. I'm not totally new to this lovely face eating disease. Well it doesn't really eat your face but it looks terrible. Camryn had it when she was a toddler and it's a nasty one. It's been about 6 years since then and we've avoided it up until now. Sigh.

Drew's red blistered nose

So poor Drew is highly contagious and a little sensitive about it all. Probably doesn't help that everyone is staying away from him and using Lysol Wipes on everything he touches. It was just one of those tear filled days. He is normally very cuddly and it's been hard for him to be kept at an arms length. But today during one of his many tear filled moments he needed a cuddle badly. So imagine me with a gangly (almost) 12 year old on my lap. Tears streaming down his face and over what is now his raw sores. Me cuddling him in what could be described as a mothers loving embrace....and all I could think of was how soon I could get to the antiseptic hand wipes and sanitize myself. What's wrong with me? Ugh.

"Supa-star"

So I just got back from our last soccer session of the season. I have been unable to play soccer for months due to my car accident in December but I've been living vicariously through Camryn who just finished up with a goalie training clinic. I was a bit peeved because after signing up for the 9 sessions we had to miss the first one because they planned it only 2 days in advance. Then they decided to cancel one that fell on a long weekend and then 2 were rained out. That plus 3 birthday parties that were at the exact same time as training sessions you can imagine how many we made it to. Needless to say Camryn was looking forward to being able to attend this last one. She loves being a goalie but I've told her that at only 9 years old I don't want her to specialize yet. I think it's too young to lock yourself into a position for the rest of your life.

Now for those of you who think I'm being overly dramatic....or those who are just unfamiliar with how youth soccer goes these days I will tell you that this is no exaggeration. There are training academies for 6 year olds. If your child shows any promise in soccer they will be actively recruited to play higher tiers. How do you move to the higher tiers?....oh by attending technical sessions, fitness sessions, regular practices, and games. Our "neighborhood club" has their top tier 7 and 8 year olds actively engaged in soccer an average of 6 times per week. The parents are expected to make sure their child is at everything unless they are bleeding from their eyes....then it's just optional. The parents are told how their child could get scholarships one day or be on the national team 10 years down the road. It's not just a scam to try to get kids to sign up. This is really the goal for these kids. Oh and if your child blows their knee out the first semester into their 4 year scholarship guess what? Bye bye scholarship. These kids are nothing but commodities. But don't tell their parents that because they don't want to hear it. Of course it wouldn't work if the kids weren't on board right? I know you thought that didn't you? Well if you are told by all the adults in your life that success for you lies on the soccer pitch and they groomed you from the time you were 5 or 6 years old to be a soccer star you'd believe it and want it so bad you could taste it.

Camryn just wants to play soccer but we went to one of the try-outs last year which they now call Player Evaluations. Basically every kid in an age group is expected to attend. They run them through a series of drills and then pluck they best of the best out for the top teams. When I heard one mother say to her 8 year old daughter "Stop limping or they'll cut you for sure" I knew I was okay with Camryn being in the bottom rungs of the club. I mean doesn't anyone want their kid to play for fun anymore? We opted out of the next year's evaluation. I think the club thought I was nuts when I asked for her to just be placed on the "bottom" tier team. But they did it.

Does that mean she didn't get sat way more than her fair share? Nope. She most certainly did. The coaches had high hopes for their own daughters and one even told me that he believed in fair playing time but that they wanted to win and didn't I understand that they needed to use their stronger players. Presumably that was meant to make me feel better about driving for an hour to watch my kid get 10 minutes of playing time in an hour long game. I will say for the record that I don't think she does suck. She was the smallest player on the team in size but she could beat the other girls in a foot race. She also worked her but off every time she was out there. Sadly she wasn't the only kid warming the bench this season.

Needless to say I was looking forward to the end of soccer for awhile. First we had just one more goalie training session to get to. So we showed up on a warm Saturday afternoon to find to our surprise that Camryn was the one and only kid to show up for it. Out of the 15 kids to start we were the only die-hards. Camryn had a one-on-one session with the best looking trainer in the club. "Oh Ramon". (Sigh) I was pleased on all fronts. Cam worked her butt off as usual and got more out of 50 minutes of training than she has in the rest of the season combined. It was so much fun to watch her improvement in less than an hour.

I'm still planning on asking for her to be placed in the lowest tier for indoor season in the fall because I do believe that soccer should always be fun at this age. I may doom her to never getting a soccer scholarship but I'm okay with that if it means she can actually enjoy her childhood and not spend it doing some variation of soccer every single day of the week whether she likes it or not. Call me crazy....

Camryn learning how to "punch" the ball.

Cat for sale, cookies for free

Andrew just finished grade 6 and is off to the awesome world of Junior High. In celebration his class had an end of the year party. All the kids were asked to bring something so Drew signed up for cookies. Not a huge deal in the big scheme of things but it just so happened I was having a brutally bad day. Over the previous three nights I had a sum total of sleep that would probably be recommended in one night. That came with it a rockin' migraine headache. You can imagine how good my mood was too. It was just one of those days when I should have just pulled the blanket up and over my head before I even hit snooze button in the morning. But Drew was so excited about the cookies that I couldn't help but want to make some for his party.

Before we could even think about the cookies though we needed to deal with dinner. Even though I was feeling like a bus had backed up over me I managed to make a home cooked meal.....despite the fact that the McDonald's was screaming oh so loudly to me.....okay well the McDonald's near us is undergoing a complete renovation which may have slightly impacted my decision to just cook.....but I'll take all the credit for being a wonderful mother anyway. I also managed to not only make 4 dozen cookies but I even had the patience to have the kids help me every step of the way too. 

You will notice that they opted out of the cleaning up part. Sigh.

So after all of that you'd think I deserved a major award and a few freshly baked hero cookies right? So what did I get instead? I will tell you. Just try not to be too jealous. I got another pile of cat poop on my bed.....discovered when I went upstairs to go to sleep. Awesome don't you think? It was good though....while I waited for the laundry to finish I had plenty of time to list the cat on E-bay. Okay I didn't but I really wanted to.....