Depressed and Scared

It's late Saturday - nearly Sunday.

Sweet Pea did very well on Thursday and Friday. We stuck to bland foods for her and she ate more than she had been eating since Monday and regained a bunch of energy. When we took her to see the doctor on Wednesday the doctor said to go very slowly with the bland foods and not to put her back on normal foods until 48 hours after she stopped throwing up. At Wednesday's appointment, Sweet Pea had lost 1 pound.

While Sweet Pea was sickest I had trouble doing anything but taking care of her and The Bug during the day, so Slipshod brought home some dinners some nights. One night he brought home something that Sweet Pea really really wanted but we could not let her have, and we told her that when she was able to eat normally again Slipshod would bring her what she wanted so badly, which was macaroni & cheese from Red Robin, with a side of cantaloupe, and some french fries from either my or Slipshod's order. We gave her those things Friday night, which was more than 48 hours from when she had last thrown up.

And that night, we heard coughing over the monitor, a gurgle, and I ran upstairs to discover Sweet Pea attempting to go back to sleep with her head in a puddle of vomit. I had to bring her downstairs to the kitchen and scrub her wet, chunky hair at 12:30am while Slipshod changed her bedding, and while she cried, "I just want to go back to sleeeeeeeeeep!"

Slipshod was worried and I was fairly horrified to see the vomiting return after two good days, but we felt that we had simply moved too quickly on the food. There had not really been a middle step between clear liquids & simple starches and macaroni & cheese & fries (Sweet Pea didn't eat any of the melon).

All the same, first thing this (Saturday) morning, I called the pediatrician's office and we took Sweet Pea in before we ate breakfast. The doctor said that Sweet Pea looked very good and checked out just fine. She was not dehydrated, did not have any pain complaints, her belly was nice and soft and did not hurt when the doctor poked around in it, etc.

The doctor did not seem concerned that our 40-pound daughter has now lost THREE POUNDS. We can see this in her whole body. Her face is too skinny. She is starting to look unhealthy to me. Slipshod is not as worried about this as I am, since the doctor did not seem worried about it and said that over all Sweet Pea looks really good. But I cannot look at Sweet Pea without nearly breaking into tears of worry. She does not like being on the bland foods diet. She was constantly asking to eat things that she was not ready for. Now she is not asking much anymore, and she often does not want to eat or drink what we offer her.

Today Slipshod's mom and her hubs were planning to come over to visit us anyway, so when they did come over they sent us packing. They watched the girls for most of the day while Slipshod and I went out together. I have been so trapped here for so long with a sick kid and another who has more energy than she knows what to do with - I am going a bit batty.

We went to the mall and had a nice lunch together and then we went to buy me some non-nursing bras, hooray. (I have one from before, but couldn't fine any more; they must be in a box somewhere.) The bras I got are not particularly pretty, but as far as I know there is no such thing as a pretty non-underwire bra in my size, so I just have go to for utility. We looked for jeans for Slipshod but they didn't have the right size. Then we moseyed back toward the car by way of Godiva, hee hee. On our way home we stopped by Costco for a few things as well.

It was SO wonderful to get out of the house together without the girls, and so sanity-saving for me to just get the heck AWAY from the constant feeling of living in survival mode. However, once home, the worry began all over again because Sweet Pea had turned down most of her lunch and had not had much to drink all day (The Bug, of course, had taken up the slack, eating and drinking everything she could get her hands on while we were gone).

Sweet Pea looks so skinny. And as the night wore on I started to dread bedtime, and nighttime. I don't know what is going to happen tonight. What if Sweet Pea throws up again? WHAT is wrong with her? How can we feed her better and get her well and back on her feet? What if something really big and horrible is wrong with her?

The doctor told us that if Sweet Pea continues to throw up, one of the pediatricians will be in the office tomorrow and we should call for advice and take her in to be seen again on Monday. If her vomit turns yellow or green, we are to take her in on Monday. If she does not improve, they will do blood work and we will go from there.

Our neighbor and a co-worker of Slipshod's both related to us stories of their young family members having similar situations to Sweet Pea's and ending up with strep infections (not strep throat). My imagination is taking me to dark and desperate places, scaring the b'jeebus out of me.

I am SO sick of living in this constant state of near panic. Our family has been sick for most of the past FIVE MONTHS. If I remember correctly (and I probably don't), the longest we've gone between illnesses has been three weeks (that did happen more than once). I have no intention of pulling Sweet Pea out of school, especially not this late in the school year, but sending her back seems like sending a one-legged, one-armed soldier back to the front lines on crutches. The days or weeks between illnesses serve only to allow me to recover my partial grasp on laundry and cleaning needs in our house, and to only slightly improve my mood and feeling of having even a tiny bit of control over anything.

Through all of this I have been reminding myself that despite how terrible of a winter it has been for us in terms of illness, we are lucky that our girls are over all very healthy, and not chronically ill. But really what it feels like these days is that Sweet Pea is chronically ill.

I am very scared. I am very depressed. And those feelings are causing me to lose a lot of sleep. Which of course makes everything seem much worse, and doesn't help me one little bit.