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Big Plastic Cup of Wine

By Anonymous

I'm not even sure where to begin to describe the past two days. I suppose it can be summed up by telling you that I'm sitting cross-legged on an air mattress, drinking red wine out of a huge plastic cup while JP is in a nearby hospital hooked up to an IV. For those who'd like to know more, I'll take it day-by-day:

Tuesday: JP thought he was feeling better Monday morning, but did too much taking care of Landon all day. And I let him because I was overwhelmed and at the library and wasn't around to watch him deteriorate (and on the phone he insisted everything was fine and he was feeling great and I should STUDY and stop calling to check in). When I dragged myself home at12:30 AM he was on fire and shivering underneath the mountain of blankets on the bed. I took his temp and it was 104.4. He said he'd forgotten to take tylenol all day, so I gave him some and his temp dropped fairly quickly. When I fell asleep at 2 he was hovering around 99.0. He sweated through all our sheets again and woke up looking like hell. I had a final in two hours, but there was no way he could handle Landon, so I made a frantic call to Maya and she immediately agreed to take him during my final (a new baby has taken his spot, so she couldn't handle him all day). I drove to campus in unusually terrible traffic, dropped the little guy off, and entered the law school 60 seconds before my M&A final began. The exam itself was okay- my analysis was very superficial and I hate that, but it was all I could do. I was supposed to spend the next 12 hours at the library learning something about environmental law for the first time in two months, but I had to go get Landon from Maya's. So I spent the afternoon taking care of both my boys. I finally started studying at 10 when they were asleep and called it quits at 2 AM. I was reading so slowly by the end that I didn't even make it all the way through the outline a good friend and classmate so graciously gave me. Luckily I was too tired to let the fact that I had never read the names of the some of the statutes and most of the cases that would be on the final in seven hours(!) keep me from falling asleep.

Today: JP had terrible night sweats twice - once on our bed and once on the couch after he moved there. This morning he was burning up again but I had to take my final at 9 and the movers were arriving at 8. I showed them around the apartment, told Landon to be nice to his daddy, and left the apartment 5 minutes later than I absolutely had to. I had hoped to finish reading the outline before the exam but didn't have time. I ran into the room to find it full and had to make a whole row of people scoot over a spot just so I could sit down, all flustered and clutching my stack of unopened books. Luckily, oh so VERY luckily, our esteemed professor wrote the exam with four separate questions, each focusing on a different statute, so I could read the question, ctrl+f the outline to find the statute at issue, read about it, and then answer it. Less luckily he reduced the time for the exam by an hour so I spent about 10 minutes teaching myself the topic and 20 minutes writing about it. It was a crazy, unsettling way to take an exam, but I think my end result was satisfactory. I picked up lunch for JP, me, and the four movers on the way home and arrived to see an apartment almost completely empty. It feels so zen; I now want to get rid of half our stuff. The movers were very nice and did an excellent job (I'm trying very hard to focus on some of the positives).

JP had deteriorated to the point of curling up on our borrowed air mattress under two blankets and shivering. We decided it was finally time to go the ER (he had been very resistant and the nurse I spoke with Sunday said that as long as his temperature responded to Tylenol, we were okay). So we piled in his car and drove to the hospital a few blocks from us. JP walked in while I got Landon in the stroller. Once there we found out the wait was several hours so the nurse recommended we try a different hospital in our neighborhood. We walked back out to discover that I had locked the freaking keys in the car. I have never done this before so of course it had to be when JP is really sick, it's freezing outside in May (in the 40's!) and none of us are dressed for it, and the only spare is on a semi-truck headed to Austin. I called AAA, renewed our expired membership over the phone, and they dispatched someone to rescue us- which already pays for the cost of renewing our membership. Despite our misfortune we had some luck on our side - the realtor was showing our apartment to prospective renters so she could let JP and Landon in to get warm. (Thank goodness it was a short walk). I waited outside his car in a crappy neighborhood wearing flip flops and a thin long sleeved shirt until a very nice man broke into JP's car in about 45 seconds and retrieved the keys (it was frightening to see how easy it was to get the doors unlocked).

Once I got home with the keys I will never again lock the door without, JP took off to the other hospital and I bathed, fed, and cuddled the Landon. For the past several hours I've been watching the Top Chef weekly marathon on Bravo, trying to do things without necessary objects (like eating without any cookware or sharp utensils - I finally broke into a package of turkey with my car key and ate that standing up by the counter. I believe that was my dinner), and thinking about JP. The last time I talked to him he was hooked up to an IV and they were running a bunch of tests. He said he was freezing though they kept putting warm blankets on him. I just realized that all our pillows were packed and I'm wondering if he'll be admitted to the hospital. The cat is freaking out about the empty apartment and Landon is snoozing in his play yard. He has been a perfect child since I threatened to take away his future siblings- sleeping 11-11.5 hours a night and doing absurdly cute and smiley things. I just realized this post is very rambly and possibly incoherent, but my god I am tired. Tired and worried and suddenly very preoccupied with our lack of pillows.

Full post as published by Lag Liv on May 28, 2008 (boomark / email).