Boy Crazy

Nathan turned seven this past week, and I told him that he could have a party. This is only fair, as Sara got one last year. The kids' birthdays are just five days apart, so we rotate who gets a kid party. The other kid gets a mom-dad-sibling party. So Nate asked for a Star Wars sleepover, and I told him he could invite four boys. Simon asked me what I had been smoking, but I was confident.

After all, Sara has had two sleepover birthdays: when she turned seven and again on her ninth birthday. They were both great. I worried about potential girl-drama, but there was hardly any. Boys, I figured, would be easy. No drama at all - just put the breakables away.

Well, it wasn't that simple. Maybe boys develop social skills more slowly? The first boy to arrive was K., Nate's bestest friend. in fact, he arrived an hour and a half ahead of schedule - his mom wanted to go to a party and "hoped I wouldn't mind taking him a little early"... He and Nate were playing happily in the fort I made with blankets and the pool table, but then the other boys showed up.

Within 10 minutes, K. was sobbing alone in a darkened room. Once the other boys showed up, Nate wasn't paying enough attention to him, he said. I pointed out to him that Nate was the host and needed to play with everyone. I encouraged him to go and join the other boys, which he sort of did, by stomping into the room where they all were, chewing out Nate and telling him they weren't friends anymore, which then made Nate cry.

Hmmm... I thought. It's going to be a long night.

Dinner was a good distraction. So was cake.

I like the notion of Darth Vader sort of popping out of the cake, like a stripper. This cake reminded me of my favorite home-decorated cake, which was for Sara's seventh birthday. She wanted a My Little Pony cake, and I found tiny plastic Pretty Ponies at a discount store. But they were highly flammable, and when I lit the candles, the ponies burst into flame and died in fearful, contorted agony. Luckily, Sara thought it was funny.

As we were about to light the candles, I noticed that one little boy, S., was missing. A quick search found him in Nate's room, alone, playing with toys. "S., it's time for cake. Are you going to come and sing 'Happy Birthday?" "Nah." "Is everything all right?" "Yeah. I don't really like cake. And I like Nate's toys. I want to play here. Call me, though, when it's time for presents." I realized that his kid was drama-free. He just wanted an uninterrupted run at the toys without having to share anything. I shrugged and went to light the candles.

And that's how the night went. They drove each other nuts the whole time. Nate opened his presents, and the boys pounced on them. Within half an hour, they had built both the Bionicles and one of the Lego spaceships. Nate didn't seem to mind, but I finally insisted that they not build the other Lego spaceship, so Nate would have it to build another time.

One kid or another was always mad / sad / boycotting the other boys. At first, I worried about it; but after a while I reached saturation level and just let them work it out. I figured as long as it wasn't always the same boy who was upset, and the trauma was evenly spread among them, good enough. Finally 9:30 rolled around. (God, had it only been three hours? Twelve hours to go...) I managed to wrangle everyone into pajamas and sleeping bags, then put on Star Wars III. I figured, "Oh, they're worn out from running around and screaming. They will get all droopy-eyed here in a few minutes." No, they spent most of the movie bugging the hell out of each other by making noise and then telling each other to shut up. I finally had to decree that each boy had to stay on his own sleeping bag, to keep them from killing each other.

It was almost midnight when the movie ended. Lights out. Go to sleep. ""SHHHHHH!" "BE QUIET!" "NO, YOU BE QUIET!!" "OK, ON THE COUNT OF THREE, BE QUIET! One, two, three." "Eep." "QUIET!" This is standard slumber party - I remember doing it myself; I left them to it and went to get ready for bed. I was standing naked in my bedroom when I heard little feet running down the hall and it didn't sound like one of my kids. I barely managed to snatch my pajamas to my bosom when K. appeared in front on me, hands on hips, enraged. "They're saying bad words out there!" I went to the living room. "Guys. Cut it with the bad words." Back to my room. I had just got toothpaste on the brush when Sara called out, "Mom! Nate's crying! Mom!" Back I went. Nate was subbing that no one was being friends, and that he has lost K.'s friendship forever. Oh, for Pete's sake. Sounds like K. was working his special magic again. I said, "All right. I'm just going to stand here until you settle down." And I stood there in the dark, like a cigar-store Indian with my arms crossed. A couple of times, K. started to say something. I just tapped his pillow with my foot and said, "Don't start." Eventually Nate's sobs faded into snoring and everyone went to sleep.

Next morning, they were in a slightly better frame of mind. I finally put my foot down with K., though. I heard him say to Nate, "I want that toy that S. has. I want to play with it. " Nate said, "Well, S. is playing with it right now." "You have to tell him he can't have it any more and give it to me, or I won't be your friend." Sure enough, Nate goes to S., and says, "Sorry, S.. K. says I have to give this to him or he won't be my friend." Uh-uh. I took the toy back from Nate and gave it back to S.. I said to K., "Another kid is playing with that, now. You can wait until he's finished. Go play with something else." "But I want to play with that." "Tough."

Nate told me later that I would have to be careful. "You'll get a reputation for being a scary mom." Suits me.

Want to Caress My Thumbnail?

I had to go to the mall today. I haven't been in one in a couple of years; but Sara's 10th birthday is coming up, and I know she would love a pair of jeans from "Justice". That's where the cool girls get their clothes. I guess she's starting to notice this stuff. Great. This is the end of an era. The poor deprived child has made it through life up to this point totally delighted with second-hands, hand-me-downs, gifts and two pairs of pants that I bought at Target last year. So, she deserves a little treat.

But do I?

I was making my way back down the mall with my shopping when a man asked me, "Want some lotion?" It was one of those kiosks. My hands were kind of dry, so I said, "Yeah. Thanks." Dead Sea? Was that the brand? It felt and smelled sooooo goood. Adding to the trouble was the salesman, who was a very skilled flirt, and super hot. He caught at my hand and examined my (ragged, chewed down) nails. "Now. I'll show you what you need for your nails." "No, really. I don't bother much with my nails." "Why not?" "Uhhhhh.... I dunno. It's just not that important to me." "Well, it will be when you try this." He picks up a buffer and starts without further ado to rub it briskly over my thumbnail. I make a subtle attempt to withdraw my hand. No way. He is hard at buffing. "OK, now I turn the buffer over to the other side. This side contains seaweed, it stimulates circulation under the nail." I roll my eyes. He buffs a little more. "OK!" He lets my hand go and I look at my thumbnail. Holy s***. It's.... shiny. Smooth. It looks as though it has clear polish on it. I made the mistake of admiring it.

He went crazy. More lotion. Cuticle softener. A sea-salt rub. My God, that was incredible. My hands felt like a baby's butt. I found myself on the verge of abandoning my Dove and Vaseline values, drawn irresistibly toward a (gasp) SPA TREATMENT. He could see that his brand of hypnosis was working on me. If you have ever seen the scene from Jungle Book when Mowgli is entranced by Kha...

I snapped out of it in the nick of time. Something about the words, "sixty-nine ninety-five". I made a break for it, striding purposefully away, perspiration trickling down my back.

I'm all right, now, but I'm in thrall of my single buffed nail. I caress it with my other fingers. Rub it against my lower lip. Try to make it catch the light. I sat with Si this evening, gazing at it. "Do you think I ought to spoil myself more often?" "Absolutely. In these times of austerity, we need a little bright spot, even if it is just a thumbnail." I realized that he thought I felt I had spoiled myself by letting the sales guy buff the single nail.

Maybe I'll go get it manicured.

Those Wild, Crazy Americans

I have to share a story I read in the paper about a Consumer Reports telephone survey of 1,000 respondents. The conclusion of the survey is that Americans indulge in all sorts of risky behavior. I read further, expecting a discussion of extreme skiing; wandering off into the desert; driving motorcycles without helmets; stuff like that. Turns out (as if you didn't already know) that I am a bad girl.

Did you know that 75% of Americans put cotton swabs inside their ears?

Yep. I do that. So much safer than the cap of a ball-point pen.

40% confess to having eaten raw cookie dough.

And raw cake batter, which is even tastier.

50% of us have a carbon monoxide detector in the home.

Well, we had one in the old house, when we had a wood stove, but not now. My colleague Rebecca says that she decided to get a CO detector after she and her husband got a fondue set. I find myself imagining a fateful dinner party at Rebecca's house: a fondue set the size of a jacuzzi, with corpses littering the dining room.

And 61% of us don’t have a rubber mat in the shower.

Shower mats remind me of a housemate I had once. He was trying to avoid some people who were looking for him (yes, this was a more exciting epoch in my life than the one I am currently experiencing), so he dyed his red hair "Rich Dark Brown". But the dye made his hair fall out. He would hoard it under the rubber shower mat. One day he took me into the bathroom to show me his hair collection and I really haven’t felt OK about shower mats since then.

This survey has done a lot for my feeling of suburban confinement. I AM edgy! If I stand on a street corner, licking the beaters from my hand-mixer, I could get a reputation. I have been wanting a reputation.

OK, time for true confessions. Please comment and share your responses to the following questions. Do you:

1. put Q-Tips in your ears?
2. eat raw cookie dough?
3. have a CO detector?
4. have a rubber mat in the shower?

Harassment Free Workplace

My school has about 50 employees, and only two are men. They both work in my department, so whenever the talk turns to sexual harassment, eyebrows start to waggle in my direction.

Who, me?

We were sitting in a staff meeting just tonight, talking about what might constitute sexual harassment, when one of the men walked in, went up to one of the women and said, “We’re all set! I’m just getting it enlarged. I’ll have it ready for you next week.”

He was talking about a photo, but I think I could be forgiven for blowing coffee out my nose.

Yet More Progress

I know Simon is getting better quickly, because I'm starting to feel annoyed about dumb little s*** that he does again. He doesn't call me when he is going to be late, which makes the yams soft and overcooked. Everywhere I turn in the kitchen, there he is; but is there a cocktail forthcoming? Noooooo! His crutches, too. They are blocking me at every turn.

OK, today I'm going to label a blog entry. All of my blog buddies do this, and so will I, after two years of blogging, just to prove to the world that I am a mindless lemming. If anyone can tell me what the point is, though, I'd love to know.

'Bout Time

Life is actually returning to normal. Si still has a VERY long way to go, but he makes some sort of progress every day. Yesterday, I drove him over to the big church parking lot near our house, so he could demonstrate his driving abilities. Stop, go, stop, go, SLAM on the brake. Stop, go, SLAM on the break. I unstuck my cheek from the windshield. "That's great, honey!" If he can press down on the break hard enough to cause whiplash, he's good to go. So, today I let him drive up to Snowbird to pick up the kids from ski school. Avoiding icy patches, he carefully crutched to his office and sat down at his desk. That was that. "I'm going to work tomorrow."

His leg looks like s***, but less so than last week. He can shower himself, sitting on a plastic stool. His recovery has been seriously set back by his complications, but he is determined to get full movement back - he's spending about three hours a day doing various exercises.

And all this means....

That Simon can return to blog-livion. Move over, Tiny Tim, and let someone else have the attention around here.

Sara is writing her autobiography for a school project. This is a big project, with assigned chapters and sub-headings. Today, I recommended that she work on the page she is supposed to devote to her brother Nathan.

Nathan

My parents say they gave me Nathan as a gift. [Ahhh...the gift of a sibling. Spared the misery of only childhood...] But sometimes I wonder... My brother was born on February 11, 2002. A few very interesting things about my brother are:

1. He likes to say very weird made-up words like "hubajubaloco".
2. He likes to pretend to do kung-fu, but really all he's doing is flailing his arms and legs.

About this time, Nathan found her and asked her to read what she was writing. She was more than happy to share. Nathan came stomping into the kitchen to tell me that Sara was just writing mean stuff.

I told Sara that she was going to have to give some thought to a more balanced portrayal of Nathan, causing her to burst into tears at the very thought of saying anything nice about her little brother.

I was reminded of that passage from the Kevin Henkes book "Julius, the Baby of the World". Lilly can't stand her baby brother; when her mother suggests she tell Julius a story, she says,

"Once upon a time, there was a baby. His name was Julius. Julius was really a germ. Julius was like dust under your bed. If he was a number, he would be zero. If he was a food, he would be a raisin. Zero is nothing. A raisin tastes like dirt. The end."

Show Me Normal

Sometime late tonight, the internationally renowned orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Charles Beck will return to Salt Lake from Austria, where he has been marketing his amazing medical innovation: synthetic tissue that can be used to replace a damaged meniscus in the knee. He may think this was more important than sticking around to check on the patients he operated on right before he left. I disagree.

It’s been a long time since I have written on my blog and it’s very likely that my readers have given me up for lost. In a way, that’s a relief. I had always tried to reflect on my life in a humorous way, and that well is totally dried up at the moment. And this is a long story – not exactly reader-friendly. But I need to write it all and not worry about style. I’ll spit it out, go to bed and maybe be able to sleep.

So here’s the deal. Si needed to have an anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) reconstruction because of his soccer accident in September. When he tore the ligament, he also released a blood clot, so we’ve been waiting to have the surgery until the clot was under control. 1/9/09 was the magic day. Dr. Beck (who really does have a great reputation) did the surgery, pulling a bit of Si’s own hamstring tendon to fashion a new ACL. It was textbook. No problems at all. A few hours later, a nurse was helping me load him into the car to recover at home. Ice, elevation, a big bandage under a pressure sock that we were told to leave alone, a lot of Percoset. They warned me that he would be pretty uncomfortable for a couple of days, then would start feeling better.

By the following afternoon, he was in agony, complaining of terrible pressure. The Percoset didn’t touch the pain. I phoned the on-call doctor about it. He told me to loosen the dressings. WTF? It was this enormous ball of bandages with a super-tight stocking holding it in place. Loosen it? How loose is loose? What if I let germs get in there? I called my dad, the ancient doctor, who told me to cut the damn pressure sock off. I did. Didn’t help in the slightest. Si reached to touch his thigh and felt a big tender swelling. Scared the s*** out of him – he thought it was a sign of a blood clot. I called the doctor on call once more. He wasn’t happy to hear from me and let me know that (“This is Dr. Henderson again.”). I explained our concern and he said, well, you should get him to an emergency room.

I wish now (like, at least twice a minute), that I had chosen the ER at the hospital where Si had the surgery. It’s really far away, though, and he was in a lot of pain. I chose the nearest ER to our house. They dismissed a blood clot out of hand, after I told them that I was currently giving Si two different types of blood thinners. They took the dressing off and looked at it, said it looked OK, wrapped him up again. Si started shouting, screaming. They gave him morphine. It didn’t help. They gave him more morphine. He hyperventilated. They gave him valium. He calmed down. The nurses there talked to me about pain management. Reminded me not to skip his meds (As if! We would both stare at the clock, WAITING for it to be time for the next meds). Told me that Si might simply have a low tolerance for pain and a high tolerance to Percoset. So we went home in a tough-it-out frame of mind.

We waited for the pain to abate, but it didn’t. We talked to friends who had had the surgery. They assured us that, yeah, it was really painful. We waited some more. Monday, I called the surgical practice to tell them that I was not going to replace the pressure stocking, because Si's leg was too painful and swollen. They just said OK.

He reached the point at which he couldn’t get up to pee. Even sitting in the edge of the bed and peeing into a bucket was agonizing. Monday night was when it got really bad. At about midnight, he lost it with me: told me that I resented having to take care of him. He could SEE IT! Well, never mind! HE could take care if HIMSELF! He got so worked up over it that he was shaking all over. I had to plead with him to let me give him his blood-thinner shot. He told me he didn’t want me around. Sent me out to sleep in the living room. I could hear him struggling in the other room so I couldn’t sleep; at 4:00 AM I went in to give him his pain-killers, and found him hysterical, gasping. He asked me if I were the ambassador (?). In the morning, I begged him to come to the ER, but he wouldn’t – told me the doctors just think he’s a baby and can’t handle pain. This went on and on. Our bedroom became sort of prison cell where he would lie and scream and shout for hours; he would beg me to change his position – nothing that I tried worked. The place was an explosion of pillows, towels, discarded ice packs, tangled sheets. Tuesday evening, I tried the doctor on call again. I was in despair. I just cried on the phone and said that his pain was unrelenting and that I didn’t know what to do. The doctor very helpfully suggested that it was because we were using a generic version of Percoset. Sometimes the generics don’t work, he told me. I had a prescription for Lortab so I went and filled that. I told the pharmacist about the generic Percoset and she told me that was absolute nonsense. I hurried home and gave Si the new pain meds, wildly hopeful that this was the crux of the problem. It didn’t help in the slightest. Si started crying. He just sobbed. The kids started melting down. We were all exhausted and hadn’t slept in days. The kids had been eking out a living on peanut butter toast since the last meal I cooked on Sunday night. Tuesday night, he screamed all night. I mean he shrieked at the tops of his lungs. I never lay down for more than two minutes. I was never so glad to see a sunrise.

Wednesday morning he had an appointment to see his family doctor, who wanted to check the level of thinners in his blood. Getting him to the appointment was horrific. Every tiny bump in the road made him scream. When we got to the doctor, I said that I was fed up. I told him that he was to call the ER at the hospital where Si had had the surgery and tell them to expect us. And that they would be admitting him. I told the doctor to call the surgical practice and tell them to have a godd**n surgeon there waiting for us. Of course, now that it was a doctor calling in, rather than a distraught wife, they actually paid attention.

Long, agonizing drive. More morphine, and still more. The surgeon on duty was Dr. Marshall (Dr. Beck’s partner) and when he opened the bandages and looked at Si’s knee, he froze. “Well. This looks like…” He couldn’t finish, so I said, “A mess.” “Yes. A mess.”

This was the first I had heard of Compartment Syndrome. Everyone had been worried about clots and focused on eliminating that as the source of the problem; but no one mentioned that opposite side of that coin- that his blood might be too thin and cause a hemorrhage. That was what had happened. He started bleeding into the knee cavity where the surgery had taken place. Like a blood blister under a fingernail, the pressure grew and grew. The blood and contaminated fluid, having no where to go, gradually started forcing their way up to the surface of the skin, where they formed blisters on the ruined tissues.

They operated on him that night, late in the evening. While they got ready, I went home to arrange for care for the kids, and I felt happy. Elated that the cause of the problem had been found; relieved that he was not in pain. I tidied up the house, especially our room; I stripped our bed and chucked the sheets. I never want to look at them ever again. I cooked a proper meal for the kids; I bathed them; supervised homework; read stories; took a shower and brushed my teeth for the first time in days.

They finished the surgery at about midnight and Dr. Marshall came into the deserted waiting room to talk to me. This surgery is called a “wash out”. Basically, they drain the trapped blood out and then flush out the knee cavity. FOUR CUPS of blood came out of his knee. They inserted a drain. The good news is that the original ligament graft is still intact. The bad news? The surgeon pulled a wry mouth and told me that recovery was going to be “a long road”. There‘s the increased stiffness and scar tissue because physical therapy will be delayed. The struggle to get his blood to the right level of coagulancy. Worst of all, the horribly damaged tissues all around his knee, prone to infection because they’ve been stewed in this pressurized blood bath.

He’s been in the hospital since Wednesday, then. Dr. Beck will take off his lederhosen and check on him in the morning. There’s a good chance that he will want to do the wash-out procedure again: another general anesthetic; another dose of morphine (which makes Si hallucinate); another invasive procedure on his knee. They are starting to look toward his eventual home-coming, whenever that may be: there is discussion of a home-health nurse and visiting therapist; they put a PIC line in his arm today. It’s like an IV that is meant to stay in place for months (MONTHS!). It’s a tube that runs up a major vein in his arm, through his shoulder and into his chest. That gives me the willeys.

He called me late tonight, a little depressed. He fears another surgery. He wants his life back. I tried to think of something comforting to say. I told him that he would feel better when he could come home in a few days and start working on his recovery. I reminded him of all the little things he would get immediate pleasure from: eating supper together; sleeping in his own bed; getting outside. But I’m dealing with my own s***, too. I’m scared about the upset to our delicately balanced two-career schedule (eventually, we both have jobs that require our attention); I’m terrified that his knee will never recover; I feel like it’s my fault and can see, looking back, all the ways that I might have prevented this from happening; I’m scared that he’ll get home and there will be another complication. I am resisting the idea that we may have to find a new normal.