February 23, 2005

open your mouth and say yikes!

Henry has four cavities. Four! CAVITIES! One for every year of his little life! And, to celebrate his fifth birthday, we will be checking in to the HOSPITAL for the pediatric equivalent of a root canal! Holy shit!

And yet, somehow, this is not the result of my bad parenting, at least not directly–the nice pediatric dentist said that he usually sees “this type of decay” (oh my god I can’t believe we’re using the word DECAY to describe Henry’s little baby TEETH) is usually associated with a serious illness or large doses of antibiotics. Has he been ill? the doctor asked. No, I said, maybe a few ear infections, but nothing out of the ordinary. Has he ever been on extensive antibiotics? No, I said again, just for the ear infections. But he was premature! I announced. Ah, he said, that’s probably it. I, of course, forgot to ask why that would be it (because every time I take Henry to a specialist and the doctor finally identifies The Problem, I am so freaked out by the diagnosis that I forget to ask all the logical questions, despite the fact that, of course, we have gone to the specialist in the first place because we thought there was a Problem and we are hoping said specialist will diagnose it and answer all our questions. This drives Wade crazy).

And then, hours later, I remembered that when Henry was in the NICU, he had ten days of antibiotics to kill whatever infection he might (or might not) have contracted from me, in addition to all the antibiotics they pumped into me in the two days between when my water broke and when I finally delivered. And since they never knew what, precisely, was wrong with me, they just gave us both, I don’t know, Cipro or something, to kill whatever might ail us. It worked, and Henry didn’t die or go blind or any of the other things we worried about, but now he has to have four teeth drilled and capped. Four! TEETH! Shit.

Of course, they can’t actually DO this proceedure until JUNE, because that’s how far the dentist is booked up, so I have a good three months to fret about this. And I certainly don’t have enough things to worry about already; I mean, I’ve been sleeping a whole five or six hours at night, so clearly I need something new to jolt me awake in a cold sweat at three am. Shit.

And the dentist, who came highly recommended and has a nice bedside manner and does a dozen of these proceedures every week, is NOT on our PPO’s provider list . . . so when I’m not agonizing about the rest of Henry’s teeth rotting away before kindergarden, or what exactly the anesthesia will do to him, or how scarred he might be by this whole experience, I can worry about where in the hell we’re going to come up with, oh, say, A THOUSAND DOLLARS to pay for this.

Shit.

February 20, 2005

wishes DO come true

Last week I wished for a sick day–and here it is! Whoo hoo! I’m dizzy and lightheaded, and can’t really function if I have to sit or stand for long. Which is what I feel like most of the time, now that I think about it. But I’ve spent most of the day in bed, ignoring all things domestic, and it’s lovely. Sadly, though, I keep thinking that I would enjoy it all more if I didn’t feel so crappy.

Wade and his mother have taken the boys to SuperTarget to get (brace yourself)–a Spiderman mask and gloves for Henry, and god only knows what kind of testosterone toy for Charlie. We are on a big superhero kick around here, and being a Pink Princess Girly Girl, I’m a little baffled by the whole thing. I’ve been trying to make it work as a sort of wierd civics and health lesson (”Spider man helps people! He is polite! He eats his veggies! He votes Democrat!”), but Henry really just wants to know where the webs come from and how he can get him some. No wonder I feel tired and woozy.

Last week the boys asked for superhero capes, so I gave them an old pair of purple pillowcases, which we pinned to their shirts. They wore them all day and couldn’t wait to show Daddy. I took pictures–lots and lots of pictures–of the capes. I call them the Super Tinky-Winky capes. Wade hates this. Thus the trip to SuperTarget for REAL hero gear. I am doomed.

Time to lay on the couch and watch HGTV.

February 19, 2005

the dream

Last night I dreamt that Charlie and I were riding on a little open-air bus, like the kind they use at Disneyland to drive you from the parking lot to the front gate. I was wearing a long wool coat that I owned in college, and my LL Bean boots (also from college); my hands were full of papers. The bus stopped and I got off and started to wave goodbye to Charlie, who was standing next to his seat looking out at me. He was wearing his puffy winter coat and his little grey backpack, and he had a pile of picture books with him and Bonsai, his stuffed chimpanzee. I kept reaching one hand through the open windows to straighten up his books and hand Bonsai to him, but Charlie kept dropping him on the seat. Then I started blowing kisses and saying, Bonjour! Bonjour! He was blowing kisses back, but not in the happy way he does when I leave him at school–he had the little confused face he gets when I tell him we have to do anything out of the ordinary (go to the doctor, take medicine, skip a nap). Then I started saying, Je t’aime! je t’aime! but he just looked more perplexed and nervous. And I noticed that his nose was running and he had dropped Bonsai again. And the driver was waiting for me to move away from the bus so he could go on to the next stop.

And then I woke up.