10.05.2006
Sick Again, Sick Again, to the Doctor We Go
Yup. Julia's sick again. I'm blaming school kids everywhere. Damn school kids with their damn germs.
Julia is an extraordinarily cheerful child. What temper she has is more and more often expressed in sassiness and back talk. Of course, we're the only ones who can understand when she's telling us to fuck off. Everyone else thinks she's talking about ducks. According to authorities, Julia is talking on a nearly 2 year old level, but is hindered by her 13 month old physiology. She isn't physically capable of pronouncing all of the words she knows, but that doesn't stop her from trying. And she's turned into a little parrot -- everything that comes out of our mouths is repeated (sometimes garbleishly, but still recognizably, at least to us) by her immediately. "Oh SHIT!" I say as I drop the carafe of espresso. "Oh shit" pipes a little voice from near the dog bowls. "God, I'm a dork" I say as I have to slam on my breaks because I nearly missed the turn into the doctor's office. "Dor!" comes from the carseat behind me. Yes, dear, your mama's a dork. And well you know it.
But the problem with having an extraordinarily cheerful child, and one who can't help but babble constantly, is that no one believes you when you tell them that she's ornerier than hell and is clearly not herself and this is NOT NORMAL and something is wrong with her. They just look at what appears (to them) to be an ordinarily cheerful child, who is extremely interactive and lively. Yes. Yes, you agree, but normally she's 100 times more active and talkative and happier than this! And then they look at you like you're lying. Because that seems impossible. Until you have lived it. She runs us ragged. She never sits still. She never stops talking. We wouldn't have her any other way.
If you don't believe me, ask Sacha and M of Babycakes. They met her in Oregon last May. We kept apologizing for her crankiness, even though we couldn't figure out why she was so cranky. It turned out she was cutting 4 teeth at once. Anyway, ask them. I'm pretty sure they'll tell you that she was just charming. Even as she was being (compared to her normal self) a complete monster.
Yeah, we have it tough, I know.
But it does suck when you know she's not feeling well, she's not acting normally, but you take her in and the doctor (well, yesterday's doctor, because our regular doctor is out of the office this week, our regular doctor knows Julia quite well and believes us now when we say she's not feeling well) tells you that she can't possibly be as sick as you say she is, because if she were she wouldn't be this happy and talkative. I say, "do you talk to people talking to you when you're sick? Because Julia is verbal like an adult is verbal, just without the vocabulary and pronunciation skills. I have to be on Death's door before I stop responding to people verbally, and Julia is like that, too. She's not like other babies who look but don't speak to strangers. Julia will talk to everyone." Anyhow, the doctor ordered a blood test to look at Julia's white blood cell count to determine if she is fighting a virus or the tail end of a sinus infection.
So I take Julia down the hall to the lab. And the two lab techs ooh and aah over her, and say they feel bad because in a minute she'll be crying and hate them. They have me hold her elbow so her arm is still, and then they prick her thumb and start squeezing the blood out. And Julia didn't cry. She flinched when her thumb was pricked, so I know she felt it. But she just watched, fascinated, as the tech collected the blood. The lab techs were floored. I was stunned. I couldn't even watch it, I felt sick. But there Julia was, not screaming, not upset, not struggling. Weird. She got a sucker and a sticker, but she was more interested in chewing the band-aid off her thumb.
The blood test showed that she is fighting a virus. Ok. For now she's fighting a virus. Hopefully that's all it ends up being. Hopefully she doesn't develop an ear or sinus infection on top of that.
So there you have it.
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awwww. I hate it when the cutest baby in all of Utah isn't quite herself.
xo
I didn't give it to her, I swear.
Bless her heart, I think half the country is fighting a virus this autumn, and only 1/1000 of them are handling it with the aplomb Julia demonstrates. My third child was the one who never complained, EVER, about any illness. She'd go in for a well baby check-up and the doctor would announce she had a raging ear infection (for which he prescribed warmed olive oil drops for pain, and nothing more).
The screamers were easier, in a sense, I suppose, in that I never worried about missing a diagnosis; but baby number three is still by far the least likely to complain, and at age 13, she's had an antibiotic once. She rarely misses school. She claims with a fair amount of pride that nerds will take over the world!!!
It's so much fun, watching them grow into who they are. Julia's going to rock the world, I can tell.
damn viruses!
Malka had a playdate after "school" (aka daycare, or "the petri dish" as we like to call it)
And I asked his parents "which" cold he was on? And they said: "Which? cold?" It's been the same damn one since the get go. It just keeps coming and going and coming and going.
I TOTALLY understand you about the Happy baby syndrome - Malka's similar - even when she's sick, she's pleasant to be around. Her inner demon only come out when she's overtired - otherwise, she's happy as a clam.
Sending chicken soup to your house. Or at least the vegetarian variety...