Where The Rubber Meets The Road

It’s quarter to four in the morning, and my body has tipped over the insomnia waterfall, ready to plunge into the weird, waking world of the sleep deprived.

Noelle took the brunt of the day shift, so it was left to me to see Gabe off to sleep. After the meningitis scare, we are extra twitchy about his every ache and sniffle. We try not to let it show. But when I ran out to collect Gabe from school Wednesday afternoon, his stomach was painful and sour, and his head ached. This is how it began last time, I thought.

The vomiting started later. I took as much of the puke patrol as I could; I have the stronger stomach. A low-grade fever rose by the hour. It was a lot like last time. It was also a lot different. There was much to be optimistic about.

Nevertheless, I stood my post, unable and unwilling to relax until something – good or bad – happened. Around two AM, Gabe woke to have some water. His temperature was 99.1. Two degrees lower with no medication. I put him back in bed and dragged my sorry ass back to the adult’s bedroom.

Noelle is turning from time to time, making the kinds of noises you make when you’re in dreamland. I sit beside her, writing this.

I wait for the sandman to come and claim me.
I am ready, Morpheus.

This is a short one, but it springs to mind whenever I am called to duty.

The itsy bitsy spider
Crawled up the water spout.
Down came the rain
And washed the spider out.
Out came the sun
And dried up all the rain,
And the itsy bitsy spider heard the horrible shriek of my wife as she ran away, and five minutes later, I killed it with a paper towel.

The End.

As detailed in my previous post, Gabe has been hospitalized with a rather nasty and heretofore unknown illness.

The first doctor we (in this case, my wife, as I drew Samara-watching duty) encountered was the sort of medical “professional” I’ve come to know and love. Blithely dismissing Gabe’s many complaints – particularly that of pain – he gave our boy a cursory pat down and insisted that a simple IV of fluids would do the trick. The problem, you see, was dehydration, he seemed to believe, no testing or labs necessary; give him some fluids and he’ll be right as rain, except that dehydration didn’t cover even a third of Gabe’s symptoms, and we hardly took the word of a dismissive resident as gospel. Nevertheless, it was what we had to deal with, so Gabe’s first night at the hospital did not go well.

I was not there for the first night, and the selfish part of me is glad. Samara was not allowed into the room due to the isolation, and one of us had to take her home and to school the next day. Noelle, being both a mother and the actual biological connection, was the obvious choice to stay with Gabe. It was a rough night for everyone, more so for Gabe and Noelle.
Thanks to the Family Medical Leave Act, both of us could take the time to keep a 24-hour vigil at Gabe’s side. For the most part, the “vigil” took the form of wringing our hands helplessly while Gabe squirmed in pain, unable to sleep, eat, or drink, while doctor after doctor came in at 15 minute intervals to prod, squeeze, and exacerbate his pain, and then shrug and repeat, “We won’t know for sure if it’s (insert individual doctor’s pet theory) until the labs come back.”
Choose your own random pet theory: dehydration, bronchitis, pneumonia, h1n1, the regular flu, meningitis, encephalitis, and “the devil”.

If you chose “meningitis”, have a cookie.
The gaggle of doctors came to a consensus and ordered up a Lumbar Puncture, known to Christopher Guest fans as a Spinal Tap. Gabe was less than enthusiastic, but a dose of fentanyl in sedation quickly put an end to any argument. Gabe had been admitted on Tuesday, after a nightmarish Monday. It was now Thursday, and as the fentanyl kicked in, his face smoothed out, and he sunk into uninterrupted sleep for the first time in roughly 90 hours.
The LP confirmed meningitis, and the doctors began to target the affliction with more specific care, resulting in the first improvement in over a week.

For the first time since Gabe was wheeled into the place moaning and writhing in agony, they gave him a painkiller that Noelle and I couldn’t have bought for $2.79. As a result, his sleep was deeper and lasted longer. The anti-nausea medication allowed him to eat and drink, although by this time, he could barely manage it, and after two spoonfuls of Jell-O, he sank back, defeated. Antibiotics, anti-virals, anti-inflammatories, and various other symptom-relieving drugs followed, and Gabe began to bounce back.
We were ecstatic when he was able to stay awake and alert, even spooning frosted flakes into his own mouth, then drift back off to sleep with minimal difficulty.

We are now in day three of the rest-and-recover part of the treatment, which is little more than it sounds: letting Gabe rest, eat, and gather back his strength. And he needs it, being barely able to stand. His body is still fighting the meningitis, which still has not been narrowed down to viral, bacteriological, or aseptic, and the fight leaves him much diminished. The meds have helped immensely, and were not much more than Noelle and I had originally thought would be appropriate. Unfortunately, we don’t have the power to give him those meds, and so the three of us (Gabe more so than I or my wife) were forced to wade through two agonizingly long days before the official story caught up with common sense. I mean, if he’s in agony and can’t rest, and is throwing up and can’t eat or drink, do you really need eighteen labs to tell you that if you relieve the pain and the nausea, he might be able to rest and recuperate? Apparently.

Gabe is not 100% yet. He isn’t even 37% yet. But he’s far, far better than his first two days. Score one very small point for western medicine. (By the way, I say “western medicine” as shorthand for “knowing more about physiology doesn’t necessarily translate to better health care”. I’m not sneering at it in favor of “alternative medicine”, which is hardly any better, and in too many cases, utterly ineffectual.)
We wait, pins, needles, seat edges, bated breath, and all that jazz. Gabe will make his way ponderously back to full health, and, however slow and arduous the process, the important parts are: will andfull health.

And where better to do that than at home?
The doctors are confident now that Gabe will do just as well at home than at the hospital from here on out. Samara and I currently await Noelle and Gabe’s arrival, and glad we’ll be to have the band back together. Now, if we could just find someone to clean the house, everything would be perfect.

It began with a cough, and went downhill from there.

We didn’t worry overmuch when Gabe started coughing. After all, it was the beginning of the school year, and illness spreads like wildfire in the first few weeks. A cold or flu was not unexpected, and those expectations were realized when a short-term flu ran through our house, with Samara the principle recipient. In a six-hour span, she was in the bathroom no less than fifteen times. But as quickly as it had come, it vanished.

Gabe continued to cough. We began to worry. Then my wife started coughing. It was time for western medicine to blunder in and grope awkwardly for a solution.
Noelle was diagnosed with bronchitis, the same was made for Gabe, and they were given a course of antibiotics. Noelle slowly improved.
Gabe did not.

Back at the doctor’s, they decided to beef up Gabe’s antibiotics in the form of an injection directly into the muscle of the thigh. Of a nine year-old. Good thinking. I’m sure they called it “discomfort”. That’s doctorspeak: choose the words and phrasing that constitutes the greatest possible understatement. Like, if your feet were torn off at the ankle by a thresher, the diagnosis would probably be, “a minor reduction in overall height”.

Gabe did not improve. He wouldn’t eat. He wouldn’t drink. And when made to take in a minimum of food and water, he promptly threw it up. He couldn’t move without pain, whether because of the still-painful injection site, or some other reason.
Back to the doctor. The pediatrician recommended hospitalization for dehydration, but was non-specific as to the cause of Gabe’s distress. We decided he’d be far happier and more comfortable at home, and were written prescriptions for stronger medications for fighting the virus? bacterial infection? and for the nausea. Gabe had not vomited in seven hours, so we decided that any additional vomiting – even once – would be reason enough to admit him.
Gabe didn’t even make it off the examination table before throwing up again. The clinic called the hospital to reserve a bed, and we were on our way.

At this point, Gabe was beyond miserable; he was coughing, vomiting, feverish, in pain, and extremely sensitive to light, movement, and the slightest touch. And no one had any idea why.
At the hospital, they put him in isolation, pending an H1N1 (so-called swine flu) test. Only Noelle, myself, and hospital staff allowed, and even then, only in just-shy-of-HazMat Devo suits.

By this time, Noelle and I were working on a combined (roughly) thirteen hours of sleep in the past forty-eight hours. We would come look back at that thirteen hours with much longing. And we were the lucky ones. Gabe not only couldn’t sleep for more than five minutes at a time, he couldn’t even get comfortable lying down in a bed. He tossed and turned, insensible to the world around him, overtaken by the pain.
Next would come the gentle attentions of the doctors, residents, nurses, and students.

It did not bode well.

My wife recently reminded me of an old saying. Of course, she was using it quite literally, as we have had a recent and massive immigration of household pests. And no, I’m not talking about a grade-school sleepover.

However, it reminded me of a conversation I’d had once, when I was yet a bachelor.
The problem with dating while being on the road – particularly as a comic (or musician) – is that 95% of the people that you meet are in their early twenties. Which would be fine if I was also of an age, but being on average ten years older… well. The age disparity is almost always accompanied by one of experience, and that disparity is the relationship killer. Anyway, after a time, I grew – shall we say – less than perfectly gentlemanly. Often as not, my sarcasm and blunt manner would send an otherwise interested young lady a-runnin’.

The aforementioned conversation was with another comic, who was commenting on my demeanor and it’s counterproductive nature. What he said (and the saying my wife had used) was, “You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.”

To which I replied, “But I’m not looking for a fly. I’m looking for a grown-ass woman.”

Fortunately, I found one.