Big Bulging Muscles. Of Doom.

My husband arrived home from work last evening and thwomped his way into the kitchen where I was desperately trying to finish dinner with a screaming baby attached to my leg. I turned toward him and saw that the thwomping was due to the fact that he kept sticking his right leg out from his hip at strange angles while he walked.

I must say that I didn’t see immediate cause for alarm when he came into the house gamboling about like a hunchback. The man tends to err on the dramatic side as related here and here. I believe that he does this so that when a real calamity comes along he is prepared to do his part of the wailing, moaning and general running around in circles.

He told me that a mysterious ailment had overcome him sometime during the day. For no apparent reason his right calf had begun to pain him. Upon inspection it was discovered to be tender to the touch and a portion of it was bulging out, like it had contracted a serious case of mutant bodybuilderitis.

This put me in a bit of a pickle. Any sort of disorder is a very tricky thing with this man: brush it off as a little matter and he gets understandably upset, but take a look at something and say, “Oh, honey, that doesn’t look so good,” and he’s liable to faint dead away. I settled for what I thought to be middle ground, and inquired if he had dropped something heavy on it or remembered walking into any walls (which he does often at home).

As I looked at the questionable swellage I momentarily lost hold of my senses and grimaced. This was met with a swift and alarmed query as to whether there was need of a trip to the emergency room, because, after all, he remembered a story from his OSHA training class where a man suffered a small cut on the job and then his arm swelled up to size of a nuclear submarine or something. And then he died.

My husband thankfully did not have a cut. When he woke up this morning not only was he still breathing, but there remained no sign of the Schwarzenegger-style swelling. The thwomping has been replaced by his normal stride, and he’s back to walking into walls, doorways, and other inanimate objects that do not yield to oncoming traffic.

Respect the Pepper

I had a near death experience yesterday. Yes, I do believe I almost died. There I was, stripping the seeds from a jalapeno pepper, minding my own business and making some yummy fresh salsa. Having done this plenty of times in the past I was trucking along all the while attempting to keep the children from getting too close to the vicious oils of the hot pepper.

It wasn’t until about thirty minutes later that the burn started. When I say burn, I mean the sensation of being cooked alive in boiling hot oil, turned on a spit over hot coals, and then having one’s hands ironed to get the wrinkles out.

I could see the burn spreading across my hand. It started in between my fingers and slowly worked its way toward the back of my hand. I doused my hands in cool water and scrubbed them with soap for the tenth time (I’m a little OCD when it comes to washing the pepper oils from my hands). It didn’t help.

A paste was made from baking soda and water and I squished it through my fingers and let it permeate my skin. It felt great for about one minute and then the burning came back with a vengeance. Thus commenced the long search for something, anything, that would relieve the agonizing death-throes that were pulsating through my body.

I tried soaking them in lemon juice, white distilled vinegar, yogurt, rubbing alcohol. I sprayed them with Dermoplast and coated them in aloe infused with Lidocaine. I even sunk so low as to soak them in milk. Nothing helped and as the night wore on the burn spread and worsened.

In desperation I swallowed three Tylenol. It was suggested that I take Benadryl. I took two. I cannot ever remember medicating with Benadryl. It made me very sleepy; and then when I went to sleep it made me wake up. I don’t drink alcohol, but if we kept it in the house I am convinced that I would have made a slobbering drunk out of myself to dull the pain in my flaming hands. It was that bad.

The only thing that would offer any lasting relief was to clasp an ice pack in both of my hands like the dear treasure it was. The whole experience got me wondering. Of all the times I have handled hot peppers in the past I had never had an issue like this before. I suddenly realized that this time I had stripped the seeds from the pepper with my fingers instead of using a knife to do so. This is a monumentally idiotic- and painful- thing to do.

Upon awakening this morning the searing pain in my hands was gone. The incident that should be so fresh in my mind is already fading, as experiences accompanied by large amounts of pain are wont to do. I should have liked to write about all of this last evening before the event was handed over to my treacherous memory, but a person would have had to pry the ice pack from my cold and lifeless hands, as I would not put it down willingly, even to write.

How to Stay Well and not Break Bones, That is the Question

My husband recently started a new job. This means many things: better hours, the chance to learn a trade, increased income, and the opportunity for job satisfaction. It also means that our family will be without medical benefits for the duration of his probationary period with the new company. I have applied for interim coverage for the kids, but that won’t kick in for at least another month.

I find it all a little frightening. And I don’t respond well to fear. Every time the baby stands up in her highchair and launches herself from it I am afraid she has finally concussed, what with all of the blows she takes to the head being a crazy spider monkey. I am convinced that whenever a bump, wump, or CRASH is heard that a piece of furniture has come to life, trapping a small child beneath it, or the refrigerator has fallen on top of someone in an act of defiance for the state of its sticky shelves.

Whenever someone stumbles or face-plants on the sidewalk, or one of the kids starts pulling at their ear I see visions of our entire family in rags, destitute and living under a bridge somewhere with the flaps of our cardboard house fluttering in the arctic life-sucking wind.

If I could I would cause the cessation of eating, bathing, driving, and general movement until such a time that if an accident were to occur during any of these activities it would be covered by traditional medical benefits. The only way I can see to accomplish this goal would be for all four of us to go into spontaneous comas simultaneously.

As I said before, I don’t respond well to fear. It makes certain chemicals in my brain go a little haywire and over stimulate my imagination. Whenever these fantastical thoughts threaten to spill over into my consciousness I put the rock of prayer on the lid so they can’t get out: “Dear Lord, here we go! 1-2-3 coma!” I’m still awake though; I don’t think He’s responding to the words of my prayer so much as the spirit behind them which is, “Dear Lord, You’re doing a great job taking care of my family- keep it up!”

Perhaps There's a Bit of Drama in Me as Well

I have been having some problems with fluid in my ears and today the doctor gave me a nasal spray to try. I am afraid of nasal sprays. I know, I know. It’s just that the thought of spraying fluid up one nostril while smooshing the other closed seems really, really scary.

Boogery liquid sloshing up my nasal passages and then careening down my throat like white water rapids just does not appeal to me. Neither does shooting medicine that burns or tingles up my nose. This is my punishment for being cruel to my husband whilst he was ill.

The doctor’s expression showed some incredulity when I disclosed my inexperience with sprays of the nasal sort. She did, however, assure me that this particular kind was very mild; there would be no nasty ejection of said spray from my mouth, no unpleasant taste, and the mist is exceedingly fine. Alrighty then. I’ll be brave. I’ll use the scary nasal spray.

When the time came for me to administer the fearful cure for all of my sinus maladies, I found myself in need of a hand to hold, some sort of emotional support. I considered my options. Little Sister was asleep and Big Brother kept running in and out of the room asking for cereal. If they witnessed me sticking something up my nose I would probably be in search of the needle nose pliers within minutes to remove some sort of entity from their nasal passages. I decided not to wait for Daddy because he would probably jump at his chance to make fun of me for being taken hostage by a smallish sort of white bottle with a ten-foot long applicator tip.

After carefully reading the instructions on “how to use this product and live to tell about it”, I took a very deep breath (possibly my last with functioning nostrils), willed my nerves to calm, tilted my head at the appropriate angle, inserted the scary tip of death into my right nostril and pumped.

My clenched eyeballs slowly opened. I hadn’t felt anything. No nasty monster had launched itself from the depths of the bottle. Did I do it right? I spritzed the other nostril. This wasn’t so bad! I have to do it every day for the next ten days? No problem.

Until tomorrow afternoon rolls around and I find that I need to psyche myself up for it all over again. Yep. There’s definitely going to be some “oh, oh, oh!” and also some cringing as my brain tells my thumb to “push up, push up, PUSH UP!” on the bottom of the bottle. Let’s not lie to ourselves.

The King of Drama Takes Ill

Now that my husband is safely out of the Valley of the Shadow of Death, I feel that it is safe to share of my journey by his side. It is commonly known that the average man reverts back to infancy when he feels a case of the sniffles coming on. He becomes unable to complete simple tasks, like taking himself to the bathroom or pouring himself a glass of juice.

My husband is the kind of man that if given warning of the impending disease, he would probably bust out the craft supplies and make a sign to drape across his prone form that proclaimed “The End is Near” instead of just laying on the couch all day whining and bemoaning the approaching doom. Every time the kids get sick I find myself begging God to let the illness pass by my husband.

This time Daddy got sick first and there was no warning. The poor soul awoke to his alarm clock and declared that he had not slept for two seconds together the entire night and that he felt positively horrible. This being only his third day on a new job he decided that there was nothing for it but to drag his weary body from the comfort of his covers and get ready for work. With very great effort he managed to dress himself and be out of the door within the minute his ride called to say he was parked out front.

Less than three hours later his ride was back out front to drop off my stomach virus stricken husband. Coming through the door, he plowed his way through us to dive onto the couch and issue the decree that he was very, very sick and delirious, and that anyone who touched, climbed on, or otherwise bothered him would be sentenced to death.

Somewhere between the front door and the couch the small amount of pity that I had been able to accumulate had vanished, and the feeble man was fated to an afternoon of being cared for by a cranky nurse.

His condition quickly deteriorated from a typical stomach virus to something called a “nerve virus.” I had never encountered this type of sickness before, but I can tell you from experience that one of the symptoms that the inflicted claims to have is paralysis of the legs. There seems to be a momentary reprieve that enables the patient to arise if the doorbell rings while the nurse is upstairs with the children.

By the early afternoon the general whininess and level of complaint had increased in pitch to match the new self-diagnoses of “ameobic dysentery” in conjunction with a “very high fever” of 100.5 degrees Fahrenheit. I was surprised when only Tylenol was requested instead of a high dosage of morphine.

Shortly after this I was struck with amnesia, due to the stress of it all, and remember very little of the remaining period of illness. I can say for sure that I was not thrown up upon like I was only a few days later, nor was I required to do any nasty cleaning up. I did have to suffer, along with the rest of the household, through some unidentifiable odors however. My husband was quick to reassure me that the stench was his decomposing body tissue, and that I should for the sake of heaven take pity on him, during this, his final hour.