April 16, 2006
deja vu all over again
There is a moment in The Matrix where Neo (Keanu Reeves) sees a black cat–twice. “Whoa,” he says, in uber-Keanu Reeves voice, “Deja vu!” The other characters get flustered; in the matrix, deja vu is the product of a glitch in the program, they tell Neo, a sign of something bad.
I know how they feel.
At 1:00 am Saturday morning, Charlie came and climbed in bed next to me. We are big on everyone sleeping in their OWN beds, but the boys know that if something is really wrong, they can come in our bed. Something was clearly wrong with Charlie; he was feverish and sad and spent the next few hours sucking his thumb and moaning and sticking his fingers in my nose. At 4:00 am, he insisted that we go get in HIS bed, which isn’t nearly as comfortable as mine, but I was feeling bad for him, so we moved and I spent the next two hours with my ass hanging off the side of the bed (because I had put the bedrail down so I could sleep more comfortably–or not, as it turned out). Charlie got up at 8:00; we gave him some Tylenol and got ready to go to the pediatrician’s office (you have to love any pediatric practice that has SATURDAY office hours–when I called, the nurse said, ‘How soon can you be here?’ and I said, “RIGHT NOW!”). The nurse did a throat culture because Charlie spent the night telling me that his “mouth hurts!” which is three-year-old for sore throat.
Does this sound familiar? It should–Charlie has strep throat. Again! If you’re not keeping track of the boy’s infections, this is twice in four weeks, and three times since December. Which is a lot of strep infections.
Charlie has apparently inherited my blue eyes, my chubby cheeks, my thumb sucking, and my propensity for repeat strep infections. Fortunately, I have outgrown both the thumb sucking and the strep (well, mostly), although I could very well wind up with strep, since the boy spent an entire night with his fingers up my nose. And that might cause me to start sucking my thumb again.
Fortunately, Charlie has a pretty strong bounce-back mechanism; after being awake most of the night, insisting that we sleep in my bed! then his bed! then asking for Daddy! then Mommy! and crying hysterically, which HAD to hurt, he finally fell asleep around 5:45 and slept for a couple of hours. When he got up, he was happy and calm and ate a waffle (how does he DO that, with a strep infection?) and watched Charlie and Lola* and then went happily with me to the doctor. When the nurse came in to do the throat culture, he opened up and let her swab his throat; afterwards, of course, he said, “I don’t like when she puts that thing in my mouth.” Me either, son.
The doctor did tell me that seven strep infections in one calendar year, or three in a season, will most likely result in a tonsillectomy. Isn’t that GREAT? When I told Wade he said, “Oh NOOO!” Exactly.
Seriously–NOTHING can go wrong this week. Right? RIGHT??? Right.
*This Charlie and Lola site takes longer to load, but it is even cuter than the Disney site–trust me!
Posted by Susan @ 9:43 pm • Uncategorized
RSS feed for comments on this post.
TrackBack URI
April 16th, 2006 at 11:22 pm, The Daring One Says:
Oh. Poor baby - both of you. Nothing will go wrong. I put an anti-jinx of wellnessity on your family.
About Keanu Reeves. Keanu, Keanu, Keanu… I once heard a rumor that he played Hamlet with some Shakespeare company in Toronto. If you’ve ever seen the Branagh version of Much Ado About Nothing, you know that our dear little Mr. Reeves should never do Shakespeare. “If I had my mouth, I would bite.” You do sir, you do. Anyway…this is a long story, it turns out. He was doing this sketchy dinner theatre thing in Toronto (I’m embellishing here) and when he breaks out with the line “Most excellent canopy” (referring to the sky in one of his soliloquies), the audience busts up laughing. When Keanu Reeves says “Most EXCELLENT” whilst performing a creation of the Bard, laughter must spill forth.
The End.
April 17th, 2006 at 4:54 am, Mir Says:
Dude. Get. His. Tonsils. Out. Now. I had a tonsillectomy as an adult (even though I had frequent strep as a kid, too) and I have never burned with such a fiery hot hatred of my parents as when I spent that MONTH afterwards, curled up in a little ball. Kids bounce right back from that surgery; adults, not so much.
I hope he’s all better very soon.
April 17th, 2006 at 8:34 am, ieatcrayonz Says:
Ah, now I think I know why I don’t recall ever having strep throat: no tonsils. My parents didn’t waste time in getting them out, either. I was a sick little kid.
Hope all is well in the Friday Playdate household soon. The waffle is a good sign.
April 17th, 2006 at 9:20 am, Kristen Says:
Oh man…poor Charlie. I KNEW that first paragraph sounded hauntingly familiar! Hope he feels better soon…for longer than two weeks.
April 17th, 2006 at 11:19 am, Jenorama Says:
I had tons of strep infections as a child too, but couldn’t say whether I had that many in one season, so I don’t know what to say about the tonsillectomy except, “Hope not,” and “Surely the rest of the week will be right as rain.”
April 17th, 2006 at 12:50 pm, Misfit Hausfrau Says:
That WAS total deja vu! Hope Charlie is well soon!
April 17th, 2006 at 1:07 pm, D's Mom Says:
Trust me the younger the tonsils come out the better. My son was 5 and my daughter was 17. And she had a way worse time of it. Smaller kids just bounce back quicker. Get it over with before he heads to school full time and the real germ warfare kicks in. Good Luck!