kaiser times two

yesterday had to be one of the worst days i've had in awhile. i felt like absolute shit. i woke up and i had pink eye and was sneezing. :( immediately called my doctor's office at UCLA to try to get an appointment. kept calling from 8:00 on and kept getting a message that they were either closed or "experiencing extremely high call volume" so finally around 9:00 i left them a message asking them to call me back to make an appointment. it has now been 28 hours and they still have not called. i could be dead by now if it were anything serious.

anyway, on a hunch, i thought maybe my office had not yet cancelled my kaiser membership, so i called and sure enough, it is active until 12/31. so i called there and got a 2:20 appointment for urgent care. this is the kind of slam dunk thing kaiser is great for. when i have something like pink eye, or strep throat, or a broken arm, any fool can tell how to fix it and they're quick and easy to deal with. i would not want to have cancer or give birth at kaiser, but they do really well at handling the simple things.

anyway, was playing with lauren and went to use the aspirator on her (little bulb shaped thing you use to get snot out of babies' noses) when she started choking and gasping for breath. i turned her upside down and thumped her on the back. then she started vomiting snot and blood. not good. i did not know if she somehow swallowed something she should not have, which was cutting up her stomach, or if she had some serious disease or what. i decided to bring her to the emergency room. keep in mind, i have no car to speak of. i called ryan but of course this would be the one time all day he was standing before a judge so had to have his cell phone off. i decided to put her in the (barely running) taurus and drive the 1 1/2 miles to kaiser myself. this involved quickly and half-assedly installing the car seat (we took it out when someone from craig's list was going to buy the car, then the person flaked).

got to kaiser without the car stalling or overheating (phew!) and then decided to just take her to the peds clinic instead of ER because by then she was happy and singing to herself. ryan by then got my message and met us in the waiting room. the doctor there determined that she'd had a nosebleed in one nostril which dripped back into her throat. since babies can't yet clear their throats, she couldn't handle all of the gunk in her throat from the cold and that's why she was making the choking sounds. yeck! i'm supposed to give her dimetap, which is cool, they make these strips that dissolve on the baby's tongue just like listerine breath strips.

then i went to my appointment and the doctor seemed kind of dumb. i had to remind her to check my ears, for example. and she knew i was breastfeeding but she tried to give me some kind of decongestant which even i knew nursing moms can't take. not just that, she just had a weird bedside manner which i won't get into, but she seemed more like a DMV employee than someone with a medical degree. anyway, she gave me the prescription for the eye drops and we went to the kaiser pharmacy. that place was a zoo! everyone seems to be spending down their HCRAs so the shelves were bare. Fine, but you'd think the buyers would learn this by now and stock up extra for the end of the year. Grrr, they were out of prenatal vitamins (no, i'm NOT pg again, breastfeeding moms have to continue their prenatal vitamins) and folic acid supplements. lauren napped in ryan's arms at the pharmacy-bad because then she wasn't tired when we got home and I WAS.

anyway, got done with kaiser, drove home and got into bed with the not-sleeping lauren who wanted to play and pull my hair. managed to get to sleep but got such a case of the chills that i had about 6 blankets and still couldn't get warm. woke up a few hours later hot from the blankets. tossed and turned. tried to shut out the sound of lauren crying (she was playing with her daddy downstairs but would rather be with me).got up to go to the bathroom and almost fainted. had to lie on the ground with the room spinning and feeling so shitty i wanted to be in a coma so i wouldn't feel anything.

have never yet in her life lost patience with lauren, have not yet snapped at her or lost my cool, but came so close yesterday. all i wanted her to do was go downstairs and play with ryan and let me be my myself, curled up in a fetal position, shivering and miserable. i did finally summon enough energy to sit up so she could nurse and she took a sip and then flashed me the most grateful, illuminated smile.

called my mom and told her to please please come up and help because really, i didn't see how i would get from the floor to the bed, let alone take care of lauren and walk jake and do anything else. she came up this afternoon and she is upstairs now, napping with lauren. ryan is back at work.

i am feeling much better today. the eye drops are a miracle, the pink eye is pretty much gone. i still have a wheezing cough but no runny nose. i have very little appetite and my head is pounding and stuffed up but man, compared to yesterday, today is a breeze.