So what do you think happens once I blog the longest blog ever and finally retire to slumber in complete exhaustion ---- a loud piercing wail emanates from the girls room to which I run in complete panic expecting to find a fire or a burgler what with the sound of complete panic and all. There's Frances a.k.a. "The Parrot", shrieking much like the shrieking shack, and since there is no fire and no burgler the next guess is she's going to throw-up all of her halloween candy that she's consumed, which luckily was only a small box of smarties. I proceed to carry her --very very quickly to the washroom in an attempt to make sure that I share as little of this experience with her as possible. Once reaching said washroom the smarties decided to remain where they were after all, whew, but the shrieking continued, a barking noise that will scare any decent parent alive, especially when you realize the noise is not from something coming up but something not getting in -- mainly oxygen. I screamed in a panic for Gil. Frances was the whitish shade of white, cold and shaking uncontrollably. We phoned tele-health who listened to her breathing, asked what color she was; if she was turning blue. She wasn't, but the area around her mouth and chin was definetely dusky (and so I mentioned this). Soon an ambulance was dispatched to our residence, Gil was still up working so it was decided he would go with Frances in the ambulance so I proceed to try and find clothes so that I would look at least somewhat presentable. I also packed a diaper bag for him to take, and then the ambulance arrived, and wouldn't you know it ---they were both young, hip and good looking. A young lady with a nose piercing and a young man with piercing blue eyes, (yes yes I am married not dead) so of course they assess the situation very quickly, two old frumpy new parents over-reacting to a cold. The piercing blue eyes reach my brown ones and he says to me, "the dispatcher said you said she was turning blue?" He said it in a rather accusitory tone. I corrected him of course feeling very patronized and informed Mr. Blue Eyes, "No I did not say she was blue I said she was dusky!"
Well I wish now that I had a picture of the look on his face; a disbelieving look like, "yah and that's different because?" They then proceeded to ask, "so do you have other children?" Again in a patronizing way, this leads Gil and I to turn a little pink and inform them, "well yes we have three others." Insert own joke here.This always seems to get a huge mouth dropping response, and then things rapidly changed. No more accusations or patronizing looks instead Mr. Blues Eyes says, "oh so you would know if this was just a cold or the flu or something. Having four you know something's really wrong!"
Ahhhh ----- duh!!!! That's why we called tele-health, it's not like she just sneezed or something. My normally strong as an ox child, who was fine all day and all night trick or treating, who went to bed without so much as a runny nose is wheezing with a barking cough. You could see her stomach muscles contracting with each breath in an attempt to get oxygen, hello people you are the ones with the flashing lights and the training, lets move it here!
The next order of business was to check her oxygen level, and as we have discovered before that poor Frances is endowed with the unfortunate Blythe feet. In other words they are short and fat and the pulse-ox can't get a reading through her short fat little feet. Next step they told us to take her to emerg or they could do it. "Excuse me but isn't that why you are here?" We were informed Gil couldn't ride with her and we could tell by the death rays she was giving the attendants that any attempt to part her with her daddy would result in more shrieking and that would just make everything worse. So ALL that just so he could drive her anyway!!! If we had known that we could have avoided all this drama; "grrrrh, arghhhh" (See Buffy).
As Gil drove away with my baby, I crept into the girls room to listen to the sound of them breathing. Once again the parents among us know this is the most soothing of sounds the most peaceful of sights and seeing and hearing your child, your tiny helpless child having difficulty with this simple natural act that we all take for granted; breathing that is, does something to your insides. You feel so very very helpless and you quickly realize how little you can do to protect them. Then of course all the many horrible scenarios rush through your brain. 1) The smarties were laced with some cyanide-like poison. Only Frances ate smarties; the other two had something else from their bag. The sudden onset of such terrible illness co-inciding with Halloween can play cruel tricks on your brain, and all of those poisonings leap to mind and you begin to wonder. 2) Perhaps she's allergic to chocolate and we just never noticed before in the thousands of times she's had chocolate. Mr. Blue eyes did keep asking about allergies and I kept saying no, but maybe we just didn't notice. 3) Perhaps she is the first case of the avian bird flu landing in Aurora as we anticipate the pandemic to end all pandemics. Can you catch the bird-flu from dressing up as a parrot?
After ascertaining my remaining three were all healthy I retired to my room still exhausted and tried in vain to sleep. It's really silly if you think about it: there is no possible way to sleep when the day and every morsel of food, or lack of food flows through your brain as you try to figure out whats happening instead of resting and letting the doctors do their job. My brain continued to race at speeds that would frighten most indy-racers and adreneline continued to course through my blood making sleep impossible. I kept the phone by my head checking every fifteen minutes to make sure it was still working.
Finally I heard the van pull back in the driveway and I flew out of bed and rushed down the stairs to see Gil with Frances, and Frances with that mischievious up to no good look on her face, and peace overwhelmed me because I knew immediately all was well.
It turns out it was croup and she was the eigth such case the doctor in the emerg had seen that night. They gave her some medicine there and sent some home to give to her today that would set her right. They said it's usually not contagious but to watch Christopher because he's that much younger and he would have a harder time with it. No worries it's not like Frances had been kissing him on the lips at every given moment all day or anything, (voice dripping with sarcasm), but she went to bed and Gil and I collapesd.
We thanked God for our four blessings and that poisoned halloween candy is an urban myth, and that our little puppy (her nick-name) was back to her non-shrieking self. I just realized how funny it is that her nic-name is puppy and she had a "barking cough" ROTFL
It is also amusing that if I really pro-port to be like my name sake, I would have used SOME imagination boiled some water, made a mustard pack for her chest, given her some ipacec and then she would have been back to normal; and Mrs. Berry would have had to eat humble pie. Obviously I failed at that part although I do think the phrasing "dusky" is very imaginative; very imaginative indeed.
