OMG

I want to know who fed me stupid pills and where I can get the antidote.

Seriously, what the hell was I thinking in taking on 3 kids with so much emotional baggage? I can't catch my breath between problems.

In all honesty, the kids are great, and I love having them here. I'm enthusiastically greeted when I get home from work and I never lack for somebody to cuddle with. Noah, the 17 year old, has always been my boy, and still is. He's the one that you're most likely to find cuddled up on the couch with me. Kaylee, the 13 year old, has always been my princess, and knows it. She's the one you'll find giving me an angelic smile while she tries to convince me to give her special privileges. And then there's Micah, the 11 year old. He's the baby and has always been treated as such. He's the one that's likely to be in his room pouting about something. I seem to be very good at pissing the child off.

The kids have been her for 3 weeks now and I had really hoped to be settled in to a routine by now. The only routine that we have is going to the ER.

The day after the kids got here Kaylee's ears started hurting. By that evening she was sitting there, hands over her ears, moaning. She hurt so bad that she couldn't even cry. Because my sister, in all her infinite wisdom, failed to send us permission to get medical treatment, the ER was the only place willing to touch the child. So we spent many hours in the ER so that they could tell us that there was fluid behind both eardrums and in one ear it had gotten infected. After Kaylee had been triaged and we'd been sent back to the waiting room the doc in triage came out and started wandering around the ER. He finally came and let me know that he had ordered some numbing eardrops from the pharmacy, but that since that would take a while he was looking to see if anybody had some statshed somewhere on the unit. Eventually a nurse practitioner pulled Kaylee into the second triage room and examined her in there. We were given some prescritions and sent home.

The following day I developed a severe cold. After having to ask my parents to come rescue me at work because I was too dizzy to drive I broke down and went to the doctor. I spent $140 to be told that I was right, it was just a severe cold. I was dizzy because the tubes in my ears weren't draining right. I was then told to stay home for a week. And definitely no doing taxes until my head cleared. So my family took my car keys away and made me stay home.

It was probably a couple of days after I had been to the doctor that we made our second trip to ER. We had just put kids to bed and things were settling down for the night. Kaylee sat bolt upright in bed, grabbed her stomach and started sobbing because of the pain. She said that she was having severe pain in her lower right abdomen. Since my mom and I couldn't remember where the appendix is we decided to let a doctor tell us that she was fine. And that's exactly what happened. The doctor we saw that night thought that the pain was caused by constipation, brought on by the tylenol3 that she had been given for the earache. So she sent us home with a prescription for laxatives and a list of high fiber foods.

A few days later Kaylee was having no problems having a bowel movement, but the pain persisted. By this time we had noticed that it moved around some, but tended to be somewhere in the middle of her abdomen or on the right side. Whether it was high or low in the abdomen changed all the time. The pain is real, but we couldn't figure out a cause. It got so bad that we ended up taking her back to ER. They ran some more tests, but still couldnn't find anything. The only progress that we made was ruling stuff out. But my sister finally sent consent for medical treatment.

So we took Kaylee for a follow-up visit at a clinic here in town. The doctor still isn't positive what it is, but she at least believes us that Kaylee really is in pain. My mom and I think that it's stressed induced, and the doctor said that that's a very real possibility. They're doinf an ultrasound looking for ovarian cysts, but at this point it's a matter of ruling out everything else before diagnosing her with stress.

This last Sunday I was sitting in the garage visiting with Noah and he was playing around in my mom's wheelchair that we were storing in there. I'm not sure how it happened, but the wheelchair tipped over backwards. I couldn't get a response out of him for a couple minutes, and then he just groaned. I finally got him to tell me he was dizzy, but he still wouldn't roll over or open his eyes. It took a little bit, but we finally got him with it enough to get up in a chair. I used the wheelchair and got him out to the car, and then it was off to the hospital. They did a CT sccan of his head, and there was no major internal trauma. He was diagnosed with a concussion and sent home. From that trip I learned that you don't have to keep somebody awake after a head injury anymore.

On Tuesday Noah got up, tried to get ready for school, but just couldn't make it. My mom called and talked to the school nurse about what was going on, and was advised that he should see a doctor. The doctor examined him that afternoon and sent him back to ER. She thought that another CT scan needed to be done of his head, since he was getting worse. So as they're trying to explain everything in triage the nurse asked Noah how he got a concussion. When Noah told him the response he got was, "OH! I heard about you!" The guy hadn't even been working on Sunday. We ran into the same scene with the tech who took him for his CT scan. This time it was decided that he has post concussive syndrome and it'll take about 6 weeks for him to get better.

So tonight Noah was asleep when I went in to call him for dinner. I got him awake enough to know that it was dinner time and then I left the room. He came out a little while later and apologized to my mom for denting the speaker on her CD player. He hit it with his head when he fell out of bed.

I put his mattress on the floor and told him that he's to stay at floor level, it's safer that way.