kristaphillips It’s been a long week 🙁
I won’t bore you with the details, but between hurting for friends who lost precious loved ones way too soon and and dealing with Annabelle who has C Diff (a bacterial infection in her colon).
Annabelle is fine. She’s happy and active. She just has very loose bloody stool. And C Diff is VERY HARD to kill. She’s on an antibiotic for it, but we do not know now long this will last. She, herself, is not contageous… but her poop is. So we are being VERY careful with cleaning. Only bleach kills it. LOTS of hand washing going on in our house and I’ve bleached everything that is safe to bleach… and a few things that aren’t.
While we don’t have to quarantine for this, just have to make sure we clean a lot (and actually, that she is in diapers helps a LOT with containing it) she can’t go to school until her stool has “form” again. While it’s getting better, it’s not there yet.
It’s the not knowing how long we are going to have to deal with this that is frustrating. And if this antibiotic doesn’t work, I’m not sure what the next course is. I know there are IV meds that can be given, but Mommy does NOT LIKE the thought of that.
The silliest thing though…
While I’ve been in a kinda cruddy mood most of the week with everything going on… I didn’t break down until today.
Today is the fall party in Annabelle’s class at school. It’s their first “party” of the year, and I’d signed up to bring something and to come early to help set up.
With all my other kids, I’ve always worked full-time out of the house, so was never able to participate or help with parties. And the last few years we’ve had Annabelle, and so that hasn’t been a possibility either because I couldn’t bring her with me in most cases.
So this was one of the first parties I was going to actually be able to HELP with. I could be her MOMMA and go and do normal Momma things with her. Is it stupid to tell you that I was OVER the moon excited about this?
It probably is.
so this morning, I packed annabelle up, drove to the school, and dropped off the plates we’d signed up to bring. Then turned around, and drove back home, crying the whole entire way. This isn’t just a tricle of tears folks. This is some almost blinding sobs. It was bad.
This momma had tried to be tough all week, tried to rise above circumstances and not let it total derail me like it has in the past.
But this silly little act of having to drop off plates and leave.. not being able to take my sweet girl to her party and see her have fun with her friends… just to totally wrecked my world.
Honestly, no clue the lesson in this. On one hand, I’m frustrated with myself for being such a ninny. There will be other parties. Other opportunities.
On the other hand, I also see progress in myself. A year ago, I would have been at the depths of despair at the first sign of trouble early this week. So I handled “well” much longer than I usually do. So progress is good, eh?
These stupid disappointments are a part of life. They will happen and there isn’t a thing we can do about them. Maybe the key isn’t to “handle” it well from the get go, but to learn to let ourselves have our moment of disappointment, then pick back up and keep going.
It’s the dwelling in it… letting it wreck our entire world and shape how we treat others that we–I– need to work on.
Discussion: Have you had any resent disappointments? How do you handle them? Are you a “lemon” from lemonade kinda person? I’d love to hear some good silver lining stories!!
Hugs and prayers. My daughter had Cdiff after a ruptured appendix and bunches of serious complications. This one really scared us, in addition to the fact that her surgery incision was so degraded with bacteria that stitches wouldn't hold it shut. She recovered, but it took years and many more health issues. As it turned out, dealing with CDiff was one of the easier problems to cure. I pray it will be the same for your child.
Oh, my heart breaks for you. I really can understand your disappointment. It doesn't seem silly at all. I've cried over missing out on much less than a holiday party! I've got 5 kids. Three of them are out of high school, and 2 of them are still school age. I've never dealt with any life threatening illnesses – nothing like the things you have walked through……the scariest that I can remember has been a 4 day stay in the NICU with one of my babies who was then known as "the mystery man of the NICU" – a scary few days, but it turned out to not be the life threatening situation that the doctors had feared.
Having said all that, though, any mom with a large family knows what it is like to have extended times stuck at home with sick kids. With 5 kids, there are still a few years that jump out in my mind, because I had sick kids for over a month! I was so tired, and they were all so sick, that I had a white board in my kitchen where I was writing down everyone I gave medicine to, and what their temps were, etc. It was so hard to keep it straight for 5 kids! The week they were finally all well, I had our family over for Thanksgiving Dinner. That night, my son came downstairs crying and saying that his ear hurt……..turned out to be an ear infection. When he came down crying, and I realized what was wrong, I started crying! I knew I was in for another 2 weeks of giving antibiotics, and it just seemed SO unfair that the kid who got sick was the one that I had just gotten done wrestling with 3 times a day to get his medicine into him!!!!! It just didn't seem fair. I hung in their all through their illnesses, through the fevers over 104, through all sleepless nights. But, it was a simple ear infection that put me over the edge.
As far as lemonades from lemons……..the biggest thing that I can tell you is that God uses all of this. He is always working to prepare us to minister to other people, and he uses the circumstances of our lives to do that. After my son was in the NICU, I questioned why God had brought us through that. It was without a doubt the most terrifying thing I had ever experienced. 8 months later, a friend of mine had a baby. There were severe complications while she was in labor, and they had to do an emergency C-section. The baby had to be intubated and was in the NICU…….my friend almost died. When I went to visit her in the hospital, we went into the NICU to see her baby. This NICU was one big room with rows of issolettes in it – with rocking chairs for parents by each isolette. I was shocked when I went in and discovered that her baby's isolette was in the same exact spot that my son's isolette had been. There were over 30 babies in that nursery, and her baby was in the same place…….her rocking chair was in the same place that I had sat and held my baby and cried. I learned something that day. Two other friends came with me……they could sympathize with how that mom felt. But, I had sat where she sat………I was the one who knew how she was feeling. I had a unique perspective. If I had not sat there with my son, I would never have been able to minister to her in the way I did. God used that experience to prepare me for the moment I would visit her in the NICU.
That's not a lot of comfort when you're changing C-Diff diapers, and missing holiday parties…….but, the memory of that gives me hope when I run into difficult times. Praying for you and for Annabelle. I pray that her C-Diff clears up completely, and quickly! Take care of yourself!
This sounds gross, but an effective treatment for C. diff is a "fecal transplant." Yep, from a healthy person's colon to the patient's colon. C. diff causes the good bacteria to be overrun by the bad bacteria, and the transplant helps re-establish good bacteria. (So technically Annabelle could be the recipient of 2 transplants….sorry just had to add that in there.)
Krista,
When I was in Kindergarten, I missed EVERY party they had at school. Since that point, I don't think I have missed any of the parties. It will get better.
Geoff
Read this earlier and forgot to comment. know I am praying for you. In fact, I prayed tonight and this morning for your precious family. you are loved.
I have learned over the years that although I may be devastated by the exact kind of experience that you had, I usually rebound fairly quickly and come up with a "new" plan. For major disappointments (like a manuscript rejection) I give myself a whole day to grieve. It helps for me to have a deadline. I can give in to my tears and despair for that one day, but the next day I need to take a deep breath and move forward. I have also learned that for me, when I am really upset about something, it is best to keep my mouth shut so I don't say anything that could really hurt someone else. If they ask me what is wrong, I just say, "I'm not ready to talk about it." And by the time I AM ready, I'm pretty much over it and it's a non-issue. Your sweet Annabelle will probably not remember this incident at all–and you can look forward to many future occasions that she WILL remember with joy.