Stress Bomb

I will admit that I tend to be a person that tends to run a little on the nuts side. There are certain situations that never fail to stress me out and turn me into a crazy hag, annoying everyone around me, particularly my husband. Two examples of situations that will never fail to send me through the roof: 1. any time we are transporting a mattress on the outside of a vehicle, like in the bed of a truck or strapped to the top of a car. I cannot stop looking back at it and feeling like at any moment it is about to blow off of the car. It makes me sweat. It makes me crazy! and 2. Navigating an airport (especially security) with a small child. I freak out and yell at everyone and also start sweating. Last week I discovered a third situation to add to my list. When my child is physically ill and I am out of my element, I turn into crazy mom. Let me tell you a little bit about it.

Last week, we had a family vacation to Minnesota with Mark's family. We drove 8 hours from Illinois and Eli did remarkably well. All that changed when we got to our meeting point, Mark's grandparent's house. Eli got clingy and lethargic and then unexpectedly started to throw up outside on the patio (where everyone would be enjoying their dinner). I switched from low-key to crazy in about 30 seconds after that. I wanted to cure him instantly and I needed everything to go off without a hitch. Of course, things don't work like that, so I had tension leaking out of my ears. We covered Eli with a towel once we got back in the car and I held a bucket in front of him while we drove the 20+ miles to the cabin we would be staying in. He made good use of it on the drive as we took a few wrong turns. I was sweating (not surprisingly) in my seat. We finally got to the cabin and in the dark, in my tense mood, things went from bad to worse (it is never a good idea to pass judgment on a place when it is nighttime and you are carrying a toddler covered in vomit around). We needed to give Eli a bath to get some of the stink off of him but the water that came out of the faucet into the tub looked worse than he did. It was yellow and smelled like iron. I had to wash his hair and skin in it (later in the week, Eli would continue to ask us who peed in his bath water). We put Eli to bed on his futon to sleep that night but at least one of us was standing watch at all times, should he start to puke in his sleep. Mark and I ended up sleeping on either side of him, waking up periodically to the sound of gagging and rushing to grab the bucket. As Eli has really never been sick like this, both of us were in full panic mode. Should we take him to the doctor? Was there a doctor anywhere near our remote cabin? We felt rather helpless and desperate. Mercifully at 3:45 am, he fell into a deeper sleep and the puke showers were over. The next day was marginally better with an absence of vomit but a high fever kept us concerned. Day three started off with Eli throwing up into the little cup of Motrin he was about to drink, followed by several more rounds. We both went back into panic mode, grabbed the bucket, and headed for the hospital that we found out was only 8 miles away. There, poor Eli got his first IV while I had to basically lay on top of him so he wouldn't move. I was sweating again. Turns out the poor kid had a nasty strain of the flu that had no real treatment other than some anti-nausea medicine.

Days went on with different symptoms and our poor boy didn't have a full health day until Wednesday (5 days into the trip). But every day, sick or not, I was watching his every move. Every cough or expression caused me to jump up and ask if he was about to throw up. My body was so tense from the stress of the situation and from the partial nights of sleep on the futon. I must have made everyone super annoyed with me. There is nothing worse than knowing you can't do anything to make your child feel better when they are looking at you with pleading eyes. I was a wreck. I might mention here too that the cabin turned out to be better in the light of day. Yes, it was slightly rustic and had rusty stink water, no cable or Internet and had a large population of spiders living in it, but it grew on us. We replaced the TV with family time and played games by night. There were endless hours of fishing to be had. Not a bad way to spend the week, well, minus the flu-ridden boy. All in all, we had 2 full days of health before we turned around and drove our 8 hours back home - through a menacing looking thunderstorm, of course. It took days to fully wash off the metallic smell from our skin. The cabin was exactly what we needed to really appreciate the craphole we live in.

As an aside, I did my first fishing ever with Eli's toddler sized fishing pole. I caught a few fish and was even convinced that hooking them in their lip was not so bad, until I hooked one right in the eye and immediately ended my fishing career.

So, if you should ever find me in one of the three stressful situations I mentioned above, don't even talk to me, because I will annoy you so much that you will want to punch me right in my sweaty face.

Here's a picture of Eli on our way home during the 20 minutes he decided to nap.