The Baby is in the hospital again. There will be lots of people who will be mad that they’re finding out again this way, but it has been a terrible, busy time and so I’ve been spotty with communication.

On Friday, I took him to meet a new doctor and the doctor performed the medical rendition of “The sky is falling! The sky is falling!” and sent us directly to the E.R. Once there, they ran all the tests and hooked him up to approximately 42 machines and, lo and behold, the sky was not falling. The Baby is perpetually congested, which causes every medical professional he comes into contact with to respond with grave concern. I have gotten to where I now see their wheels turning and I scream, “STOP! I see where you’re going with that little brain of yours and I’ll let you know that he ALWAYS sounds like this. So, just stop it. Whatever train of thought you boarding, just get off those tracks.”

However, once there, we decided that we would use this time to optimize the settings on his EVIL CPAP machine and also get some questions answered about another medical situation that was “urgent” a week ago and suddenly, getting us the test results didn’t seem so urgent. So we were admitted to the swanky D9 floor, with it’s expansive windows, private bathrooms, and comfortable-ish couches.

Alex took the first Friday night shift. He barely slept at all and I found out, when I went to relive him, that he had hurled several times (he used, “I hugged the toilet bowl”). So I sent him home to rest and I spent the rest of the day at the hospital, with plans to spend the night with the Baby.

On Saturday evening, the Baby was exhausted and his bedtime, fortuitously, just happens to be right at shift change, so I had him asleep by 7, but they came and poked and prodded until he woke up (twice) and so he didn’t really settle until about 9:30. I had a hard time falling asleep, and finally passed out at 10:45, only to be woken up by the nurses checking vitals again at 11:30pm. I laid in bed wondering why my stomach felt so weird until, at the stroke of midnight, my stomach decided that it had had enough and I tossed all of my cookies into our private toilet.

I sat around hoping I would feel better (I didn’t) until I decided that enough was enough, the Baby was sleeping peacefully, and I needed to go home. I found our nurse, who raised her eyebrows and chased me off the floor at 1:00am.

My plan was to sneak into our bedroom and grab my pillow, ear plugs, and my ginger pills and sleep on the couch. I did not want to wake Alex.

However, when I got home at 1:30am, the lights in our bedroom were on and the shower was running. I braced myself.

I rounded the corner to find Alex sitting on the floor of the shower. Note, at this point, he does not know that I had left the hospital. I was trying not to disturb him. I thought he would be mad at me.

“Alex,” I said loudly.

He slid open the shower door, started crying, and said, “I’m so glad you’re here”.

Apparently, he had been throwing up continuously since 8pm. His eyes were sunken in, his skin was pale, and he looked terrible. He compared the way he felt to when he had that heat exhaustion on the bike trail and I had to drive my car off road like a safari to reach him. 

I was feeling pretty terrible, but I was not knocking on death’s door and so I offered to make a Gatorade/Pedialyte/Saltines run. On the way, I posted a facebook message in the hopes of getting someone who lives near us to be available in case he needed to be admitted to the ER (Hey Kateri!)

The convenient store I wanted to go to was closed so I had to go…to Wal-Mart. If you know two things about me, one is that I despise Wal-Mart for very many reasons. Prior to last night, I had shopped there three times in the past six years. But, this was a Gatorade emergency, so I went and meandered around trying to find what we needed. I got back about 2:30am.

By the time I got home, my stomach was in terrible knots and I knew what was coming. I got Alex settled (with specific instructions that the next time he lost it, I would be calling my friend to take him to the E.R.). I then threw up approximately 17 times, something I have not done since I was a child.

I crawled into the bedroom and said, “WE NEED HELP!” (because remember The Kid is still sleeping peacefully in his bedroom). Alex started to call his parents but I said we should call The Baby’s nurse at the hospital first. While on the phone with her, Alex leaps from the bed and runs to the bathroom.

At this point, The Kid stumbles out of his room looking like he has seen a ghost. He says, “I heard a scary voice calling Beth’s name,” at which point I realize that my vomiting must sound like a banshee screaming the word, “Beth”, which would actually be a pretty effective way of scaring people.

Now, if you know two things about me, one is that I hate Wal-Mart and the other is that The Kid getting enough sleep is one of the most important things in my life. To show you my priorities, they are:

1. Love God
2. Love People
3. Make sure the Kid gets to bed on time and gets a full 10 hours of sleep

That I allowed him to stand there and ask us questions instead of picking him up and physically placing him back into bed should show you how sick I was. We got him settled back down and then I called my friend to ask her to come get Alex and deliver him to the E.R. She and her fiancee showed up in record time because that’s what good night owl friends do- pick up your vomiting and diarrheal husband to take him to the ER.

So, with Alex to the E.R., I threw up two more times and then passed out at 4:00am to be woken up at 7:30am by The Kid.

Our church family stepped up big time and coordinated getting some needed supplies to The Baby, getting Alex home from the ER, and getting the Kid out of this cesspool of a house.

In conjuncture with my BFF at work leaving this week, my adult ESL students being petrified of ICE raids (and trying to help them figure out what to do about it), and getting rear-ended on the highway on Thursday, we’ve had a pretty cruddy go of it this week.

However, I am happy to report that we continue to have the best friends and family ever and the calvary has rallied.

Also, I have eaten 8 Saltine crackers without incident, so…progress.