The Worst Part of Parenting
The Triage!
First, I need to address this: I have a new name! The Dame of Disarray! I didn’t want to be a Queen of Choas (name taken already anyway), and I’m certainly no Princess! I think I have earned the honorable Damehood through the depths of service to these four incredible and insane children. And if you know me, you know that disarray (noun and verb) is entirely appropriate. I will leave the KristinWritesMuch in parenthesis for a couple of issues, but it will disappear once people aren’t like “Who tf is this??” when I show up in their email.
I am hoping to put more focus on my writing and this newsletter this year. Not a resolution or anything because I don’t make those! But, I thought of the name a while ago and am finally getting around to rebranding! I’ll be doing some graphic design at some point.
Having to triage your children on a daily basis is one of those parenting things that you really don’t think of before having children. The amount of triage largely depends on the child, their penchant for drama, and/or their familiarity with WebMD…
Last week, since I couldn’t write about my last clinic/ER experience with one of my sons, I did some visiting and storytelling at a few of the local breweries (just from the barstool)! I can’t keep my mouth shut, I am full of TMI, and I love to entertain. I hope I’m at least entertaining! My last brewery stop on Tuesday night was met with a new bartender (one I hadn’t experienced yet, she’s not new there). She was young, and I asked her if she was planning on having children. Yeah, probably not the coolest question - but, I like to know these things so that I frame the stories properly! So, I start in with, “One thing they don’t tell you about parenting is that you need to be a triage nurse…” And she came back with, “I’m in nursing school!” How perfect is that?!?!? I said, “I wish to God I would have gone to school for nursing! I wish I had known I would need to with these kids!”
The worst thing is that you never know whether you really need to go in and get something checked out! Unless it’s obvious.
To complicate that, two of my children have poor body awareness and pain tolerance that is above and beyond most of the population. Don’t get me wrong, they will scream/cry/faint/etc… for needles and rate that pain a 10, but at the same time, they do not always feel internal things going on. I think the needle pain registers because they can see it. My oldest went from “I think I might have a stomach ache” to having an appendectomy (and rating that pain a 0!!). Then he flat out refused any pain meds after the procedure. I begged him to at least take Tylenol! I’m not sure whether this is due to sensory issues with autism or completely genetic because there have been very similar stories about this lack of awareness and pain tolerance from at least a couple of other family members on their dad’s side.
The one that has a penchant for drama always has something going on. At least once a week, he is home from school due to: headache, pain in his leg Monday due to hitting something on Friday, possible concussion (days later) from hitting his head on his locker, ball pain, hurt his back sleeping, or his back still hurts from XXX time… He gets angry if I question, and even angrier if I’m dismissive. This is the one I’ve been to the clinic/ER with like three times since X-mas Day!
The other one, my daughter, has probably thought she’s had just about everything imaginable. Diabetes, diverticulitis, appendicitis… She will NOT stay off WebMD. I would restrict that website, but then she would just get it from everywhere and anywhere else (and possible misinformation). She messages me every single ailment while she’s in school. Some days, it can be up to three different ailments. Why does her arm hurt? Why has her back been hurting for two days now? What is this bump here? Do I think her stomach ache is something serious? Why didn’t I give her a Covid test before school? I’m about to ask her para to just take her phone. Last week was a “put that on the list for your doctor’s appointment on Friday” week! At least that gave me an easy out. When asking when to reschedule, I told them we probably need to stay on a six-month check-in basis. More like 3.
I’ve had to tell this child that the pineapple she ate was NOT eating her from the inside out…
I have also had to tell her that her brain won’t eat itself!
Again, I should probably have some better responses…
But???? How do you even respond to that? I probably need to do like I do for my assignment grading and have a document collection of responses to copy and paste in.
I can’t make this stuff up.
Then, on the flip side - sometimes the complaints of earaches really are something - at her previous doctor appointment in November, she had been complaining about her ears that week. She did, in fact, have an ear infection. But, with all of the complaints, who would have known? I was just glad that we’d had the follow-up from her stomach aches which led to an ultrasound (which showed pretty much nothing) that week, and I’d asked them to look at her ears.
I had a lot of time to reflect on my childhood and doctor visits while I was waiting with my middle son in the ER (I guess it’s called ED these days, but I’m old school) for thirteen hours the week between Christmas and New Years.
I’m sure we were on hold for that long because my son had pain in his lower right abdomen, and we were concerned it may be his appendix - they did a blood draw when we got there and triaged, so my guess is his white blood cell count was normal, so they knew his appendix wasn’t going to rupture in the waiting room (an elevated white cell count is indicative of possible appendicitis - I only know this because of the experience with my oldest and all the googling I did then - it was the pivotal piece of information).
Several times, giving the rundown of his recent flu (trip to the clinic on Xmas Day) when we mentioned he had a fever of 105, each person checked to see if we meant 100.5. Every time we said, “No, it was 105,” they asked why we didn’t take him to the ER. To which I would respond that he was too sick to sit in the ER for 5 hours (this trip completely validated that decision)! When I saw the temp, initially it was 104.9, I totally flipped and knew it was an emergency, but also knew that I would not subject a kid this sick to a 5-hour wait to be seen. First, I gave him Tylenol and then texted a nurse friend, my sister, and his dad. I asked my nurse friend what I should do because I was about to throw him in a cold bath. She said Tylenol and a cool cloth, and then alternate Ibuprofen - which I did know, but needed to hear it from someone else and needed to know whether to take him in or not. I tried to wait calmly for 20 minutes to see if the Tylenol was working, and maybe temped him a little early, but that’s when I got the 105 reading and immediately gave him the Ibuprofen and a cold rag. And did a whole bunch more freaking out. Thankfully, those three things did the trick, but I ended up taking him to the clinic a couple of hours later because my sister reminded me to check his pulse-ox and that was 91. He tested positive for the flu, and they said to just keep up with alternating the Tylenol and Ibuprofen.
So, four days later, he says he has a stomach ache on the right side. Unfortunately, this was at 8 pm, so the ER was the only place to take him. I wasn’t going to possibly overlook this symptom. He had intermittently run a fever since testing positive for the flu, but managed not to have a fever while we were in the ER.
I’m pretty sure that had anyone taken a minute to do proper vitals and listen to his lungs, they may have suggested pneumonia as another possibility and our wait may not have been a total of 14 hours before he got settled into a room. But, basically, they took his temp, pulse-ox, BP, and when he finally saw the doctor for all of two minutes, the doctor only poked at his stomach and requested another blood draw and a CT.
While I wasn’t glad that my son ended up having pneumonia and being checked into the hospital, I was glad there was something wrong with him that validated the trip to the ER.
I remembered one time, when we were kids, my mom said to my younger brother, “there better be something wrong with you!” while taking him to the doctor. Then I remember her talking about how bad she felt when they thought it might be his appendix and sent him for tests. It wasn’t, but I remember her feeling guilty.
I was identifying with my mom’s experience. While I sat there waiting with my son, I caught myself thinking that I really hoped it wasn’t his appendix (I had been through that trauma with my oldest), but I hoped it was something. But, really, I hoped it was nothing. It was weird. I think it was such a weird position because of the current lack of resources. I hated the idea of potentially wasting precious resources, I hated the idea of having to wait so long because of the lack of resources. But, I also desperately wanted everything to be alright!
The other instance I thought of, after the doctor popped his head in just long enough to say, “it’s pneumonia,” was when my youngest brother had double pneumonia. He had been sick, and of course, my mom gave him medicine and whatnot, but it wasn’t until my youngest sister told my mom that he was really sick and could only sleep if he propped himself up with pillows, that my mom decided to take him in. Once again, she felt bad when it turned out he had double pneumonia.
I get it. I understand my mom a bit better now that I’m in a position where I have to decide what to take the kids in for and what to just give them Tylenol, gas medicine, stool softener, Tums…etc.. for. It’s HARD!! Like, seriously hard! If I had a nursing degree, it would at least be a little bit easier!
I also remember going through a phase of thinking every bump and lump on my body was something deadly. Like when I first discovered the cartilage bumps behind my ears (or maybe they are lymph nodes?). Now I just googled it to see what they were, and I’m a bit scared. LOL!!! Thankfully, my mom’s generation didn’t have Google around! It’s nice, but scary as fuck when you are trying to gather information on something to know whether to take a kid in or not!
The fear is the worst. The fear that you will fail to check something out that turns into something bad. I’d have to give away too much information about my last trip to the ER to tell you properly - but I heard a story about a mom who let her child’s pain slide for two days and had a somewhat tragic result (it wasn’t life or death, so the child lived, but left the hospital with one less body part). And that is my worst fear - not that particular instance, but that fear in general of leaving something go. It’s terrifying.
When I was a kid, I got to a point where I was afraid to tell my mom about my ails. I don’t know why. I actually fell off of a horse and seriously injured my back, but I didn’t say one word about it or how much pain I was in. I couldn’t laugh without pain, I had to sit and sleep in a certain position, and walk a certain way to lessen the pain. I have no recollection of my thoughts at the time that kept me from telling my mother about the accident and the excruciating pain I was in. Now, I can only look back and think that maybe I was afraid that my mom wouldn’t let me go horseback riding again if she knew. Months later, I ended up reinjuring my back on a trampoline. I know why I didn’t say anything then: I wasn’t supposed to be at that house jumping on the trampoline at that time. My brother, sister, and I had snuck over there.
I thought about these back injuries a couple of years ago when I put my back out shoveling. I told each of my children about the horse accident and not telling my mom and explained to them that they should ALWAYS tell me if they hurt themselves or if they are in pain. Hindsight, maybe that’s why they tell me every little thing???? Hahahaha! They probably don’t even remember that conversation.
I also have an attitude about seeking medical help for myself. I just didn’t. Unless it was something urgent. I went about eight years without any kind of exam, appointment, or whatever. But, then I was also busy taking care of kids and just didn’t think about it, and didn’t have any issues. I have now done yearly exams and various medical appointments regularly since March 2018. But, I caught myself last weekend explaining my ankle situation to a friend when I explained why I wasn’t wearing boots in such cold weather. With my ankle, I pretty much just went, “ok, so this is my life now,” and didn’t even consider having it checked out. It gives out. If I wear boots, it’s worse, and I essentially have to limp around to avoid having it give out, and I feel ridiculous. I think I chalked it up to “getting old” stuff, but I finally called and set up an appointment to have it looked at. So, I get a gold star for that!
When you get right down to it, all aspects of parenting can be challenging. There are so many decisions a parent needs to make on a daily basis. At the end of each day, you just hope that you made all of the best choices, and your kids live long, healthy, and happy lives.
I hope your year-long January was significantly less full of medical drama!
I really need to do a better job of spell-checking before I hit publish!! LOL! Oops, all fixed.