Month: April 2012

The allconsuming guide to a hospital stay

Those of us with children who have compromised health are well versed in how to survive yet another hospital stay and I thought it only fair to give you all a heads up should you ever be required to endure stay with your child in hospital.

  1. Wear thongs in the showers. It was after a nasty case of athlete’s foot that I learnt that lesson. Look on it this way, it’s like camping without the flies and dirt.
  2. Remember to pack your own toiletries. Washing your hair with that hospital strength skin cleanser doesn’t end well for anyone.
  3. Take your own mug. No matter the diagnosis or reason for your stay, nothing is more depressing than drinking from a polystyrene cup. I also take my own tea bags but I am weird and have been doing this for a long time.
  4. You won’t feel like it but drink lots of water. Back away from the Coke Zero. Your arch enemy of the long hospital stay is the industrial strength air-conditioning combined with stress, sleep deprivation and an appalling diet. Your skin and urinary tract will thank you later. Trust me on this one.
  5. Finally it is best to accept that this interment is solely about getting your child well. Resign yourself to the fact your diet is going to consist of fast food, hospital food leftovers, toast and chocolate. Lots and lots of chocolate. See Point 4 about the water.
It doesn't look like the picture. First Lean Cuisine since 1988. Surprisingly not missed.

 

Oscar update:

The orthopaedic consult came around tonight at about 8pm. He was nowhere near as scalpel ready as the registrar and is basically advocating a longer hospital stay than last time (I am anticipating 10 days minimum), getting the infection diseases team on board with possible MRI to see if there is something going on deeper in the joint. There was mention of a PIC line and several weeks of IV antibiotics. We’re hardly home free but this is far less brain fart inducing for me than surgery.

 

Onward.

 

He is where he needs to be

Oscar spiked a temperature yesterday which was kind of weird. Then he wandered lonely as a cloud around the house crying and wailing which was kind of really annoying. I pointed out to my other 99 children that here was a case study on how NOT to garner maternal love, care and affection.

Then he slept for 15 hours which made the alarm bells clang and me berate myself for having such a cold dead heart. Didn’t stop me from harassing him to actually get up, have a shower and ‘you’ll feel so much better’ him.

He kept saying, ‘no hospital’ which I kept putting into the category of “annoying melodramatic manchild behaviour”. Also, file under: Cold Dead Heart.

And then he pointed to his foot and said, ‘ow.’

Remember the last time he pointed to his foot and said ‘ow’? Yeah. That.

So here we are, back at Mona Vale Hospital which I did nickname the Hospital of Hotness after seeing two spunky emergency registrars (hello Mr AmeriCanadian and Mr Scotland) and a rather easy-on-the-eye radiologist. Small mercies, looking for the positive wherever you kind find it and all that.

Cellulitis in the same leg, the same spot, the same same same.

You tell yourself this is where he needs to be.

You think of Eden in Niger and Nat Bass in Ethiopia and thank all the powers that be that the worst you endure are stupid people in Emergency Department waiting rooms with minor ailments that simply require ice, some panadol and a good lie down.

But it doesn’t help.

You know the antibiotics will kick in, that yes, you’ll be in hospital for probably-somewhere-around-at-least- five-days but really, it’s so small fry compared to the Mighty Tiff and Brave Ivy and what so many others contend with each and every day.

But the reality is trying to work out who’ll look after your other kids and ‘oh my God all those clothes I’ve dumped in the little boys room that still need to be sorted’ and ‘how the hell am I going to do my first shift at the kindergarten tomorrow’ and ‘holy crap there’s nothing in the house for the kids school lunches’ and all the rest.

You tell yourself this is where he needs to be.

The cannula goes in with barely a wail – a lot of wimpering and wriggling but no thrashing and wails to rival the hounds at the gates of hell.

The ortho registrar comes around – another ridiculously good looking medical professional. A bit short and I’m not happy with his shoes but having someone easy on the eye say to you, ‘this is very concerning,’ is a little bit helpful.

There’s talk of surgery to remove the hardware in his foot from the 2010 surgeries. (Read about that adventure here, here, here, here, here and me having sex dreams on the floor of Oscar’s ward here, here and here.

There is plaster applied to the leg to immobilise it. The phrase “disintegration of the joint” is mentioned.

You tell yourself this is where he needs to be. And yet all you want to do is run. Grab him and run. It’ll be fine. We’ll deal with it. But you know this is where he needs to be.

You really need chocolate. And suddenly you have an overwhelming urge to cry. This catches me unaware and now, as I type this, I’m sobbing. In the crappy “Parents Dining Area”. I don’t sob in hospital. I save it up for when we get home and yell at everyone instead. It normally comes out in me mopping floors which you know, means that at least happens once a year.

But it’s too much. This kid. This manchild who drives me wild with all the questions and the contradictions of wanting to be a teenager but playing the disability card when he can’t be arsed to pull his own doona up over him when he gets into bed, of following me around like a shadow, of loitering at the boys’ house next door like a lost puppy, all of it. It’s too much. It’s so unfair.

I want to scream FUCK YOU God but I don’t even believe in him anymore so that’s pretty useless. It’s one thing for me as a parent to be dealt the card of a kid with a dodgy chromosome, but to make the child pay for it with needles and pain and doctors and surgeries and a body and brain that just don’t want to work together is just cruel.

But we will be fine. We will get through this. We will rise up from the fall down.

He is where he needs to be.

Onward.

Awww, you guys made me ink…

because once this is done, I’m totally blaming the interweb. The ink that I have decided upon.

 

On the outside of my right foot:

Onward

On the outside of my left foot:

Never give up

 

In this sort of font/look”

 

On the thumb side of my left pointer finger:

A green (yoda) light saber

Think of the opportunities to use this – every time I try to use the force to bring the tv remote closer to me; every time I point at my kids to get them to do something they will then ignore me asking them to do, and so on and so forth.

On the inside of my right wrist:

but maybe a wooden spoon instead of the tongs.

 

On the inside of my right wrist (not across my back!):

quotation marks

 

Bring that shit on.

 

I have no idea of the timeframe (or the cost!) but there you have it. A plan. This approaching 40 mid-life crisis is working a treat for me quite frankly.

 

Onward!

The week that was

So my role as a walking community service announcement is well established. This only serves to confirm it:

 

 

Divine on Salada crackers or on fresh white bread with butter and the whipped peanutty goodness. Even better on toast. With butter. And yes, American and Canadian friends, we have only JUST got whipped peanut butter on our supermarket shelves. Shut.Up.

_____

I first saw the following a few weeks back but I freaking adore it and it keeps popping into my head and making me smile. Nothing wrong with that I say. Your handsome arsed Grandfather had one blade AND polio. Looking good popop!

I’m no Vanderbuilt but this train makes hay. *toot toot*

_____

It is against my religion to post anything about cats on this blog. I wear it as a badge of honour, like the fact I have never seen Titanic or The Notebook. But this, this is fucking funny.

Your morning ennui:

I am free to go.
Yet I remain.

The white idiot writhes on his chair, begging for cheeseburgers.

I’m surrounded by morons.

The whipped cream in the bathroom is not whipped cream. 

*snicker*

*****

Who doesn’t need a magical unicorn mask? The comments are AWESOME.

*****

Awesome article – now there are gays in space. Charlie Brooker, I could kiss you.

It must be awful, being a homophobe. Having to spend all that time obsessing about what gay people might be doing with their genitals. Seeing it in your mind, over and over again, in high-definition close-up. Bravely you masturbate, to make the pictures go away, but to no avail. They’re seared onto your mental membranes. Every time you close your eyes, an imaginary gay man’s imaginary penis rises from the murk, bowing ominously in your direction, sensing your discomfort. Laughing. Mocking. Possibly even winking. How dare they, this man and his penis? How dare they do this to you?

_ – _ – _ -_

Blackbird’s Middle (son) proved this image – in all its hotness – was real

The image:

The proof:

+ + + + +

And well, this. Nothing needed except to say CHANNING TATUM IN A MOVIE ABOUT BEING A MALE STRIPPER:

As you were.

Onward.

sour cream streusel cup cakes

Last week I met up with Mrs Woog and Beach Cottage and other lovely ladies at the park so the kids could go and play soccer with a creepy dad and other strangers. I took some of these tasty little numbers with me and Mrs Woog has been asking for the recipe (or me to drop more into her which school holidays has made near impossible).

The recipe comes from my mother-in-law and I’m not sure where it comes from before her. You can make it as a cake, in which case you put half the batter in the tin, cover with the streusel, add the rest of the batter and then top with the rest of the streusel. But there’s something about them as cupcakes – little mouthfuls of contentment.

This recipe can be halved to make one 24cm cake. I’m not sure how many cupcakes it’d make as I always do double. This makes I’ve made the cupcakes two ways – one where I’ve put some batter in the patty pan then streusel then batter then streusel but it’s fiddly and annoying. My advice is to top with a heaped dessert spoon of the streusel and then – oh so delicately (not) – smoosh it in to the batter. (The picture below however is when I did the former rather than the latter) I haven’t doubled the streusel topping as when I did it made LOADS too much – it’d be find if you were making a cake but as cupcakes you don’t need as much.

Sour Cream Streusel Cake

Cake

  • 250g butter
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • 2 cups plain flour
  • 1tsp baking powder
  • 1tsp bi-carb
  • 1tsp vanilla
  • 1 cup sour cream

Streusel

  • 1/2 cup brown sugar
  • 1/2 cup nuts (I’ve used mixed nuts, pecans and pistachios. I’ve chopped them up in a processor or chopped them roughly. Basically do whatever floats your boat.)
  • 1tsp cinnamon
  1. Preheat oven to 180C and line patty pans with liners (it will make 15-18)
  2. Put all the ingredients for the cake in a food processor and blend until smooth and pale.
  3. Combine the streusel ingredients
  4. Place a heaped dessert spoon in your patty pan liners, top with a heaped spoon of streusel and smoosh into the batter a bit.
  5. Bake for 15-20 minutes