Giving Thanks, 2006
By late afternoon on Thanksgiving all the neighbors already had their yards and homes fully decorated for Christmas. There's a 20 foot inflatable snowman with spotlights just next door. The kids are in Heaven.
Apparently, we're already slackers on the street, falling behind because we didn't spend one holiday decorating for another. Honestly, we'll be doing good to get a wreath on the front door this season, and not just because we're still living out of boxes.
Last Saturday Evan came down with a high fever. Sunday, Shaun took him to an AfterHours Clinic and he tested positive for the flu virus with a temp over 105. Mid-week I took him to the doctor when the high fever persisted and mouth sores developed, and just now we've returned from yet another visit to the clinic because he's had this 105 fever for nearly 6 days now.
We're all on Tamiflu. Evan's had who knows how many doses of Motrin and Tylenol. Between that and everyone else's Tamiflu doses, and rubbing Aquaphor on Evan's lips, and washing my hands a thousand times a day, well it's a full-time job. We have Lord knows how many medicine droppers floating around the kitchen, circulating from the utensil drawer to the mouths, to the sink, to the dishwasher... and only two of them actually fit into the bottles. This leaves me pulling out my custard bowls to pour the medicine in and draw out of with the bigger syringes. And every time I feel like an apothecary mixing and grinding my concoctions. At the clinic tonight we found out we'll be adding Abuterol (sp?) for slight wheezing, to prevent this from turning into Pneumonia.
I have a breathing machine, thankfully, however I lost the tubes in the move and so we have to visit a medical supply store before the treatments can actually commence. Fun, fun. Just what I want to do on a Saturday, how about you? Forget Christmas shopping at the mall- I'll just do some one-stop shopping at the medical supply store and buy everybody Dr. Scholls foot pads and throat lozenges. No worries, though- I'll find red and green or something to keep it festive.
And Christmas card pictures may not happen either the way things are going. If not because of this sickness, then because Evan's hair is going to be so long by then from us putting off his haircut that he might be mistaken for that character on the Adam's Family. His hair grows remarkably fast, like his father's. At his last haircut the stylist kept referring to him as "fuzzball." As in "I thought i just saw a fuzzball fly by... where did he go running to?"
But to get back to the holiday I originally sat down to comment on, we had a nice Thanksgiving at our house. Uncle John and family came down for a visit to the new house and took their chances being around the germs that lurk herein. We didn't let the poor hygiene or sickness rain on this Thanksgiving because we like to eat.
We had a DELICIOUS meal that I couldn't stop remarking and humming my way through eating. (I'm very vocal about my food. So is Jack- hums through an entire jar of sweet potatoes. And so is my brother, come to think of it; he and I sound like a cloned set of Homer Simpsons when we throw back a good home-cooked meal- po-tat-oes, mmmmmm, the drool dripping.) And after eating we sat back and kicked up our feet to digest while the grandparents chased the kids around and worked off Sister Shubert's yeast rolls.
Jack, too, enjoyed his first Thanksgiving; attacked his first helping of mashed potatoes like a lion after his kill. Madalyn was delighted at all the options! and at all the grandparent attention that was not being shared with Evan because Evan was half-dead on the couch, hot as the hinges of hell, with cracked and bleeding lips and a mouth full of canker sores. He wouldn't even eat cake. Cake!
This brings me to the particular reason I'm thankful this Thanksgiving season; something we say we're thankful for all the time but that we really take for granted more often than not. This year I find myself especially grateful to the Lord for our general good health. I thank Him and praise Him deeply for that gift.
You know how when sickness hits it has a way of throwing every trivial and temporal thing out the back door, how it leaves you standing there with the very few things that really matter resting in the palms of your hand like magnified objects. When things are paired down for you like that, perspective settles on you like a soft snow, and a strange sort of peace and contentedness- a reverent appreciation- sets in. So as much as I hate- and I mean HATE- to watch my child suffer, I fervently pray that this past week will be fruitful. That it will help our family enter the advent season on a fresh foot, with what matters most on the forefront of our minds. Because this fever of Evan's sure has burned it into mine.
