This is NOT Spinal Tap

Pop quiz asshole:

In the midst of your toddler's evening bath, your wife comes into the bathroom bearing your infant son in her arms and a fearful look on her face.  Her first words to you are, "He's rigid, Simon.  Does he look purple to you?"  What do you do?

What do you do?

Answer:
It doesn't matter what you do, because your wife is going to bundle that boy right up and get her ass over to the hospital, like, now.

I had both the boys and the dogs out in the backyard just after supper yesterday with a strict admonition from my wife not to stray too far away from Tavish in his bouncy chair so that I could keep any stray mosquitoes from dive-bombing the infant.  After returning into the house Tavish started to grunt with each breath, which he does, so I wasn't too concerned.  Amy was downstairs with a girlfriend on the computer, showing her some new scrapbooking software.  Amy came to take Tavish when it was time for the firstborn's bath.

A few minutes into the bath, Amy walked into the room and presented me with our seven-week infant as mentioned above.  In the glare of the lights, his usually ruddy complexion did have a bit of an unwonted porphyry hue.  Plus, a little more alarmingly, he was holding all four of his limbs rather rigidly.  He looked like a little boy seated on a roller coaster, arms raised slightly - bravely - away from the restraints, a sort of stunned look on his face, almost expressionless, eyes wide.

Amy was the one ON the roller coaster though.  Any potential for physical distress in her sons makes her physically nauseous.  So, I continued with the toddler's bath and Amy and her girlfriend went to the hospital.

I got a phone call about an hour later, after Dex was asleep, from the girlfriend, letting me know that the doctor was a little concerned in that the grunting and stiffness WAS a sign of some sort of physical distress and they were going to have to run a few tests to fine out what, exactly.

Some blood tests, a urinalysis, an X-ray... maybe a spinal tap.

A couple hours later, and after another phone call, this time from a still nauseous-sounding wife, the trio arrived back home with the diagnosis: a urinary tract infection.  They didn't need to do the tap, though they had prepped a patch on his back for one.

The boy has to go back to the hospital this afternoon for an ultrasound so they can look at his kidneys in more detail.  Amy and I both recalled from her own second ultrasound during pregnancy that Tavish's kidneys were slightly enlarged, but not alarmingly so.

Tavish was a real trooper too, from what Amy told me.  Hardly raised a fuss when they took multiple blood samples.  Didn't really squall when they foisted the catheter on him.  The only real distress was for the X-ray.  Given his size and general lack of motor control, they sat him on a miniature bicycle seat and encased his torso in a hard plastic shell to ensure he remained physically immobile for the ZAP!  Euphemistically, he didn't much care for all that.

But he's home now; Amy slept with him beside her all night, her bedside light on.  As I was settling in with the two of them, she asked me, "How can you remain so calm at times like this?"

I replied, quipping but truthfully, "Well, I prefer to reserve my emotional outbursts for incidents that involve shit and vomit."  I show frustration easily under an unexpected deluge of baby bile (so warm trickling down my neck and chest!) and at early morning discoveries of fresh piles of poo by the back door.

Life's trivialities get me more riled up than minor disasters.  I guess Amy and I balance each other out that way.  She just shakes her head at my muttered imprecations as concerns the dogs and the variable states of squalour in which we frequently find our house.

*****

On a lighter note, but still disconcertingly, Declan is terrified of debris.

This is the reason we fled back into the house yesterday evening: too many pine cones and flora-based detritus on the back patio.

It started earlier in the week when he and I took a leisurely stroll around the cul-de-sac.  At one point he was confronted by a staggered line of pine cones that impeded his progress on the sidewalk.  He began to whine, clung to my shorts and steadfastly refused to move until I had scattered them safely to the side.

Yesterday evening, after nearly treading on an errant pine cone on the patio, he backed away from it on his tip toes and started to bawl pitifully.  When I got him distracted and cavorting out on the grass, he was fine, pine cones or no.  But he seems to think they're bugs of some sort and cowers in terror before them.  (The day before, Amy had to engage in mortal combat with a house fly before Dex would deign re-enter the living room.)

Jokingly, when we were all sitting outside, I asked Amy what she thought would happen if we put Dex in the middle of a ring of pine cones.  I had images of a vampire surrounded by a ring of crushed Eucharistic wafers - physically impeded by a spiritual barrier of some sort.  Amy laughed and said she was thinking the same thing.  We decided not to try it out - in spite of the abundance of pine cones in our back yard - due to the potential for emotional scarring.

Man, I hope it's just a phase.

Comments

[Paula]

Absolutely it's the best news that Tavish was diagnosed with something relatively minor, especially without a spinal tap. It's always better to be hyper-vigilant than not with small ones. As for Declan, it IS a phase. Liam went through the stage of freaking out when presented with snow or mud or puddles to walk through, lasting, oh, maybe 2-3 years. We still (at 7) get the occassional balk at mud. I've NEVER had the stereotypical rough and tumble type of boy.

[marian]

Gaaa! Well, Declan first. I'm certain it's just a phase. As you know, I'm the expert on phases, and you don't know the half of it. Kids come into this world with some weird baggage that takes them a while to work out, in my opinion.

As for Tavish, I am keeping you all in my thoughts today and hoping this is the usual absolutely nothing that babies cook up in order to make sure the parents know where the balance of power lies. Deep breath.

[Linda]

You guys are kind of lucky I don't know where you live because I would be there, making a total pest of myself and being all obnoxious and trying to make you feel better and probly cooking all kinda shit and just trying to convince you that I really feel for you. Gad, I feel like this happened to one of my kids. Very glad Tav and you all are ok. DeClan will be fine. Get your light sabre out and fry the bastard cones!

[rick]

That's the sort of thing that'll wake you up, sure; we will be thinking of you.

And I'm not sure I'm going to be able to get your striking image of a ring of eucharistic pine cones out of my head for a while, surrounding a perhaps reeling little figure with bared fangs who may be starting to smolder a little bit.

And how is it that you're already wearing shorts several lines of latitude to the north while we're still huddling around in laps of fetid wool and caribou skins?

[Sarah]

So glad that the cause of Tavish's rollercoaster mime is not too serious and can be treated easily :)

[TerriTorial]

I suck under pressure and often vomited when faced with an emotional/terrifying situation. I am glad they were able to diagnose his problem. Keep us updated on the ultrasound.

As for Declan....total phase. I was the same was a child. Twigs scared me...evil things.

[Simon]

Rick,

I consider it my personal obligation as a Canadian to wear shorts as frequently as possible as soon as day-time forecast high temperatures hover around the freezing mark. Plus, it's actually been quite nice lately!

[Mark]

Scary about Tavish. Glad it was something minor (not to him, though, I'm sure).

Ben is scared of what we call "tiny tumbleweeds." They are about four inches across at their widest point and are, just like we named them, tumbleweeds. He won't step onto the back patio if one is on it (of course, right now our back patio is only about 5 square feet).

Too funny about your relative ambivalence when it comes to the big things, but irrational rage as relates to the little stuff. I do the same. The balance is cool, though. I act collected when Shannon reacts to something, when I might normally freak out a bit. She does the same for me. Ben even throws in a "What's da matter?" when one of us sighs or cries. Sorry for long comment. Been too long since you posted, so I was about to explode.

[rick]

We've been trying to remember all the odd phobias that our boy went through, and can only recover odd pottery shards & fragments of the things that at one time could just stop us dead in gobstoppered slack-jawed amazement- "Where did THAT come from, d'you suppose?" The good news, I guess, is that now it is actually kind of hard to remember those behaviors ten or more years on and he's become such a level-headed competent guy.

I think that kind of balance of emotional response that you & Mark note must be pretty common in couples. Disaster on a grand scale will cause you to fly immediately into a great calm, but the commonplace can easily be too much to bear. We can be at our best on the Titanic, but man when the starter cord on the lawn mower snaps....

Simon, we've got people down here with the same sort of meteorologically-determined dress code. They're like ground hogs in shorts. Once we're past the spring equinox they're putting on shorts even if we still have three months of arctic Nor-easterly gales off Lake Superior to endure and they're not taking 'em off until November. Me, I like to keep my frock coat and vest on until July.

Hope Tavish (and you all) are doing better this afternoon.

I'm sorry for the long comment, too. You just seem to bring out my native prolixity. Imprecations was a good word.

[Jenn]

David and I are sitting here on our respective laptops and gasping in alarm. Rigid purple infant! Not good! How is he now? How is Amy? More chapters more chapters!

The debris phobia, however, tickles me to no end. This, I have not heard of. The kid is cute even in his phobic moments.

[Grampa]

Whew...!

[TerriTorial]

Just checking in to see how Tavish is doing? Hope all is well.

[Hazel Hazel]

Glad Tav came out of the ordeal relatively unscathed. I have an eerie calm in the face of adversity---I can keep myself together until the incident is over and then fall to pieces. I guess that's better than some of the alternatives.
Declan will get over his fears soon enough. In short time you will wish he had some of the same hesitation about life's larger matters but he go full steam into the unknown and love every minute of it. And you will hate it.