A ridiculous Wednesday

 On Wednesday last week, Ben was out of town; I had to teach and go to meetings all day, and Jack had final exams he could not miss. SO OF COURSE WE HAD A SICK KID. 

Minnie woke up at 11:39 pm on Tuesday (about 45 minutes after I fell asleep, so I was in deep deep perfect sleep) inconsolably crying that her ear hurt. 

I was not surprised by this because she'd had a yucky cold for a few days by then. Snotty nose on Saturday. Snotty nose and a cough that seemed to require an overnight humidifier on Sunday. Super snotty nose on Monday morning-- so snotty that she stayed home from school even though she didn't have a fever because wiping her nose made her cry. She was fine on Tuesday, though, you guys! So fine that she went to school and  dance and was 75% less snottty.

Honestly, she looks a little sick in that picture, now that I think about it.

Anyway. 11:39 on Tuesday night. Sobbing kid with an ear ache. Me, barely awake and very slow moving. I gave her some Tylenol and put her back to bed. She was in my room again before 1 am, saying her ear still hurt. I brought her in bed with me and was basically just like oh that sucks go to sleep. This was not super effective-- GO FIGURE-- and we were both kind of hot even though it was so so so so so cold outside. We tossed and turned for over an hour before I realized I needed to do something. I got us both a t-shirt instead of our long sleeved pajama shirts, turned down the heat, turned on my ceiling fan, opened a bedroom window a crack, and removed one of the quilts from the bed. Then I gave her a heating pad for her ear and turned on Kids Baking Championship which neither one of us had ever seen but are both hooked on now.

I fell asleep sometime right before 2:30 and woke up to my 5 am alarm, which Minnie slept through (she told me later that she watched 2 episodes of the show, and I was for sure asleep before they revealed the very first challenge). I slept for like 4 hours total, and it really sucked. I did yoga, ran on the elliptical, walked the dog, and tidied up the house. I called the triage nurse at our HMO to get in line for the scheduler to call me and get Minnie in to be seen, and I started to make a plan to go to class with a sick kid. 

I made it through the onslaught of the morning, got dressed in a black sweater and white tulle skirt with black hearts (I LOVE wearing a favorite outfit every Wednesday, and I really meant to take a picture), and fielded a call from our doctor's office scheduler. She offered me a 9 am urgent care appointment or a 2:30 pm pediatrician appointment, I SHOULD HAVE TAKEN THE 2:30, but I thought 9 am would be perfect-- office right by campus, 55 minutes before my class. And! I figured any provider could look in Minnie's ear and write a script for amoxicillin, right?? (Minnie has notes in her chart after a previous terrible urgent care situation when she was almost hospitalized for pneumonia to be scheduled ONLY WITH PEDS PROVIDERS, but she's so much older now and it was just ear pain and blah.)

ANWAY. Let me just tell you that Minnie didn't get (the correct) meds until FIVE THIRTY just moments before the pharmacy closed for the day and she was in pretty significant pain/discomfort for over 24 hours. The upshot was that the urgent care provider told me exactly how much tylenol and ibuprofen she could take (more accurate than the box range) for maximum relief-- very handy.

Lesson learned-- I will always schedule with the pediatrician, even for ear pain, even if the appointment is later than I had hoped for.

Bonus, though! Minnie is a delightful audience member in lecture. My class is in this really cool free standing movie theater where the WI Film Festival screens some of its titles, and while the seats are plush and cozy, they are also kind of small. Minnie spread out at a table in the very back and had that cool little writing tablet above, some markers and coloring books, and a giant pad of reusable vinyl stickers (I linked the bundle she has-- the playhouse one is a super giant hit-- but they also have other themes that are less stereotypically girly and these things are amazing for keeping kids quietly engaged) and was a happy little clam the whole time. I also packed a bag of random snacks and included a pair of scissors in her snack pouch so she could open stuff herself (pictured: that same set up at dance)

She told me after class that she perked up when I talked about Harriet Tubman (brief reference to the naming of the second wave feminist org the Combahee River Collective) and MLK (brief reference to the general imagery in his speeches mirroring a move from light to dark) and Barack Obama (aside about his 2004 keynote speech for John Kerry) because she KNOWS ALL ABOUT THOSE PEOPLE FROM SCHOOL, and I was impressed that small mentions caught her ear.

It was sort of a happy accident that I had her with me because my weekly TA meeting for my huge class is kind of cramped in my office (the 4 of us absolutely max out my seating), so I moved it to a conference room to accommodate our visitor, and it was so pleasant that I scheduled the conference room for the rest of the semester.

Minnie expressed a desire to "get my Starbucks on," so we went to the student-staffed one in the dorms. Minnie also got to live her dream of touching a food robot, and I checked my fancy Wednesday coffee off my list.

Minnie was thrilled to color diligently on a rainbow of paper from the copy room and work on homemade valentines for home while I plugged away at my computer for the rest of the day, and she already had a packed school lunch, so it was easy peasy.

Even her increased OTC med doses eventually wore off, and there was a gap before the next round kicked in, so she was ready to relax with a heating pad and more baking show after the dive/dance run and a frantic trip to a different HMO pharmacy at closing time for the correct antibiotic (shout out to a very excellent and efficient doctor).

Bonus for us! Jack was home early from finals and brought his final exam cookies from his culinary class (Ben's mom showed him how to make them over Christmas) and they were SO GOOD.

When her pain reliever kicked in again, Minnie began the elaborate process of turning the pages she colored in my office into water color, something she had been talking about all day that ended up using up about 10 dish towels but made her extremely happy.

I was loopy from lack of sleep by the time Dorothy and Cooper finally got home. Dorothy had homework, so I made her a 9pm dinner and then napped on the couch until she told me she was going to bed. Cooper was asleep at the other end of the couch, so both of us zombie walked to bed around 10. No fun movie night or reading, but, all in all, a pretty relaxing evening. 

On an exercise note: I had time to lift weights in the evening, but I just did not even feel like it. I think on future Wednesdays, though, I can definitely make it happen. I was lucky to make my 60-minute minimum dog walks for the day because OMG I WAS DRAGGING as you might imagine.

I did finish this book after dinner, and it was a treat-- I highly recommend