Racking Up The Reward Points

The pouring has diminished to a light drizzle here in the extremely frozen, frost bitten tundra of northeastern Wisconsin. It currently feels like -28 outside.

Other than during pregnancies & childbirths, I've never spent as much time in the ER, hospital, doctors' office as I have this last month. I have this brilliant idea, too - don't steal it - a frequent visitor rewards system! You can get rewards for getting gas, eating sandwiches, buying clothes; why not for getting poked, prodded, diced & sliced? Every hour you spend in some sort of healthcare facility, you get a 1% discount on your total bill. So far for this year, I think we'd be pushing a good 15-20% and it's not even February.

After 2 hours of emotional/mental prep work that Ella would be ok and it was a simple check up; we were off to see the pediatrician.

She was seriously not feeling well, and her tonsils/whatever-those-hangy-things-are-in-your-throat were so swollen they were touching each other & made breathing, eating & drinking extremely painful and difficult. An easy gag reflex resulted in a lot of extra loads of laundry the past few days.

After a 15 minute trial that felt more like hours; the nurse finally pulled a blood stained cotton tipped wooden torture device/swab/having-a-brain-fart-can't-think-of-the-name-of-the-thing out of Ella's throat. Thank the Lord the nurse had far more patience than I did; as I'd have pried her mouth open & jammed it in there after about the 30th try. Pretty sure we could have possibly been the most difficult case of her day & worst ever strep culture experience. 5 minutes after the ordeal we had ...

The Cheesy fake smile genetically inherited from her one & only mother ... 

No tonsillectomy needed, thank the Lord. But 10 days of 2.5tsps of amoxillicin that, as our luck would probably have, would need to be given by injection instead of gagging down the foul tasting chalky liquid. Chalk 1 up for Ella, the foul smelling, chalky liquid was actually good and her first dose was taken and hasn't made a reappearance. 

I rewarded myself (and my recovering appendix-less husband) with a venti cup of liquid crack for mothers, aka a skinny peppermint moca with no whip/taste-like-butt-but-won't-appear-on-my-butt. It was the only thing that kept me from not requesting they knock her out for the strep culture (and the rest of the day). I was the 5th car in the tiny drive thru line. 20 minutes later I was the 4th car in the tiny drive thru line. About 35 minutes later I was thanking the kind barista for the free drinks and regretting not having ordered 1 of everything, no matter how non-diet friendly those to-die-for brownies are! (Starbucks, you rock!) 

Off to get the prescription before heading home. The pharmacist laughed and greeted me by name. (Yes, that frequent visitor program would be profitable for Walgreens, too!) Turns out, despite my 45 minute lapse between leaving the clinic and pulling up to his drive up window; the amoxicillin was not ready. Of course it wasn't, but hey no one hit me in the parking lot, so thank the Lord! I took my contagious daughter into Walgreens (sorry all you other sick people sharing Lord knows what other kind of germs, just wanted to round out the germ pool so fellow shoppers & employees would build up a strong immunity to strep, too) We grabbed replacement toothbrushes as well as chewable Motrin that I just knew would grace my floor in liquid half digested purple mess in a few hours. (I could at least hope it hit tile and not the carpet or bedding)

Soon we were home and I was praying that the free Starbucks had turned my day around. Praise the Lord, Ella took her first full dose and I have yet to see it, or any half digested purple messes. Tomorrow, I am sure the boys & I will be revisiting the clinic; thankfully they are manly boys and will require a 15 second swab as opposed to the 15 hour version. I wonder if my pharmacist friend has Fridays off?

PS: 2 hours after writing this post I pulled an Olympic Mom Record of a 7 minute puke clean up in aisle 'Brennan's bed'. I wish I had the 'scale 14 steps' record to have prevented the bed bomb, but I have to work on that. Not even hitting my first running 10 minute mile prepped me for the 10:45 wake up call & flight scaling! Off to the doctor we go again tomorrow! Shhh don't tell my husband my secret daily Starbucks treat scheme, only 2 kids/days left! :)

PSS: 4 hours after writing this Addy & Connor have also had issues. After a call to the nurse line & a little rule bending, I have an assembly line style appointment set up to get 3 cultures done tomorrow. Thankful for the extra refrigerator in the basement, as we'll need at least 1, if not 2, shelves dedicated to amoxicillin bottles at this rate.