Yeah. I have to tell this tale, if only because it so parenthood. Murphy, as I expected, joyfully walked right back into his life. YAY. And as I expected, was back in the animation lab less than twenty four hours after he got home. That night, he was feeling just a little warm, he said. So we took his temp.
Uh-huh. 103.6.
He explained that he’d spent time, the week prior, with an companion who had evidently had the flu. So this was probably no big deal, even with the gastric complications. Like two twenty-one year old male persons in a foreign country with no mother/sister/girlfriend in attendance are gonna know flu from typohoid. So we called my doctor’s service for advice. The service explained that none of the doctors on call are willing to talk to anybody who hasn’t already been seen in the office (how helpful). But the operator explained the situation to her supervisor and assured me that they would find a doctor, and he would call. Which never happened.
So we went with the flu thing – Tylenol/ibuprofen, rest, clear liquids. And he felt better. Next day, I took him to the student health center, signed him up for his insurance, got him a (negative) strep test. Fine. Friday, he spent hours at the animation lab. Yesterday, while we went to the Farmer’s Market and came home to clean up the house for tomorrow’s (we were pretty certain) steady stream of visitors, M went right back up to the lab to work. And stayed to watch the US lose the World Cup match. And came home – feeling like he’d probably done too much.
So he napped and took it easy, and everything seemed fine.
This morning, we were all supposed to be in the High Council room by 7:15am while Murphy reported on his mission. Then he had a talk to give in Sacrament Meeting at 9 a.m. (for which he had picked hymns designed to make me weepy up there in front of everybody). All the family on both sides and all the old friends were coming to hear this. It was gonna be great. And then the quiet entertaining of well-wishers, for which food actually was prepared (not by me).
7:15 is early for me. WAY early for Sunday best and make-up. And when I have to wake to a deadline, I simply don’t fall asleep. Not till an hour before I have to get up. So when I rolled out at 6:30 in the morning, and Guy came rushing in, waving a thermometer – stating in awful awake terms that Murphy now had a 102 degree fever and felt like trash – I was a little taken aback.
Not only did he have a headache. His stomach was tight and turgid. And he had a pain, right over his appendix. Then, when he sat up, his spine and neck felt really stiff.
(Here is where the mother, cool and efficient on the outside, is FREAKING FLIPPING OUT on the inside.)
Then the sudden flurry of Facebook announcements and emails and calls to warn people that Stuff Might Not Be Happening Today After-all. We actually were pretty determined that M, if he felt well enough, get to church and give that talk – it’s really awful to jump out of a talk two hours before the meeting – makes a mess for everybody else. But we had family coming in from all up and down the valley, and they needed a head’-up.
I called my doctor’s service again and this time talked to a really NICE doctor (as opposed to the stupid one who never called the other night). And she said – give him a million mg. of analgesic and take him to Insta-care.
So we got the kid up (picture me trying to read the DMBA student insurance handbook from cover to cover in fifteen minutes in my pajamas. The student health center is not open on Sunday. The student urgent care facility is not open on Sunday. You can take your student anywhere else you want, but the insurance won’t pay for it unless you take him to only certain approved and utterly undisclosed facilities. Did I mention that these facilities are undisclosed? Yes. Unless you call a number at which someone is supposed to disclose these locations. A number no one evidently answers on Sunday) – and as I was saying before that short parenthetic note – we got the kid up (it’s 7:30 at this point and church is at 9), threw him in the car and G took him to the insti-care at our local huge regional hospital. Which was closed. The insti-care, I mean, not the hospital. Closed. Not to open until 9 in the morning. Great.
So back home they came. By this time, I was still emailing and calling. And Murphy had cancelled the stream of well-wishers. But he finally determined that he could, in fact, give his talk. Then there was a flurry of emails and calls to tell everybody that.
This is how it worked: we finally brought him into the meeting on a stretcher; then, when it was his turn to speak, sort of lifted the head end of the stretcher . . .
Not really.
I went to church early to explain and get everything straightened out. As I headed out to my car, Rachel called me—sadly saying she was not able to make the meeting because she was on her way to the emergency room with her youngest (who is six – with a broken foot). G brought Murphy to the meeting at the last minute, coming in at the end of the opening hymn (reference the mention above of the weeping conductor*). M sat on the stand through the sac. (far, far away from any other at-risk human), gave his talk and then was instantly carted off again to the insta-care.* Which was now open. Halleluhia.
[*detail – it was Lead Kindly Light, one of my most favorite, poignant hymns – the one I sang with my dear Kira in the mountains, to guitar and harp and fire’s sparking, way back before the cancer took her. One I have sung with the kids all their lives. And I’m doing fine, giving it my heart – till we come to the very last lines as Murphy, who for all I know is dying of dengue fever and appendicitis all at the same time, walks into that chapel for the first time in two years: and in the morn, those angel faces smile—which I have loved long since and lost a while – and there I lost it. Blubbering my face off in front of the whole place. My little voice, booming out, faltered and then quit entirely. And when it was over, I sat down and sobbed into my hands. “Here, Kristen” Pam, my organist said, leaning over her instrument—and handed me a Kleenex.]
[*Further detail: they got half way to insta-care before they remembered they had to have all the insurance paperwork, and had to go back home to get it]
I stayed behind and taught my Sunday School class ( I LOVE my SS class. Love, love,love). Then I flew the coop, ringing G up to get the medical bottom line. No malaria. (breathe, breathe.) No mono. (sigh.) The doctor suspect this to be a “tourista,” a simple matter of his having drunk our native water and eaten our rich native food. But we’re still waiting on the lab work. And I am stolidly expecting the worst. If you expect the worst, just about anything else is going to be GREAT NEWS.
And there you are.
Just another day of rest –
Why is it, I wonder, that almost everything I write ends up sounding like a pitch for It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World III?
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