Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Quit It, Kid! You’re Scaring Me!!!

Most of you know that Ryan is a very active kid. He rises before the sun, plays hard all day, flops into bed at night, and is sound asleep just after his head hits the pillow. Saturday morning he had his Home Depot class and then baseball practice. After lunch and chores, he went outside to play with neighborhood friends. In the late afternoon, he came home and said, “I think I want to lie down for a few minutes.” HUH? He got a pillow and went to sleep on my 8-hour-old couch.

He woke up two hours later, sobbing hysterically. He started wandering around the house saying, “I need to find Sponge Bob. He has the key to the condo and we have to get in to get Max’s couch. It’s too heavy to lift.” Okaaay. You all know I have a pretty good sense of humor. If he were trying to be funny, I would have laughed right along. Most of you also know that I can usually follow Ryan’s thought patterns. Not this time. He was freaking me out. He was inconsolable and just kept escalating. He even went outside, sobbing and talking jibberish, wandering around the car looking for something (apparently Sponge Bob). I gently coaxed him inside, which made him really mad. He threw himself, sobbing, sweaty and snotty, onto my now-10-hour-old couch. I carefully picked him up, and he was burning up. I threw him in the car and headed for the Instacare.

All the way there, and even once we got there, he kept ranting about Sponge Bob and condo keys and Max’s couch. (FYI…Max is Ryan’s Build-A-Bear. He has no couch.) They did all kinds of tests (strep, etc.), and everything was negative. The doctor said she thought it was just a virus, and to keep him hydrated and on Motrin every four hours. That’s it? Fifteen minutes before, he would have been a candidate for the pediatric psych ward, and Motrin and Gatorade are going to fix it? She did say that if the fever (and bizarre behavior) lasted more than 2 days, to come back. Um…yea.

We had volunteered to take a neighbor to church on Sunday, so we got up, got ready and went. But about 30 minutes into Sacrament Meeting, Ryan started telling me that his stomach hurt and he felt like he needed to go get a drink. I think I speak for most moms when I say that your kid puking in the chapel (or anywhere in public, really) is one of our worst nightmares. So we made other arrangements for the neighbor to get home, and left. We came home, changed clothes, put a bedsheet over the 30-hour-old couch, and that is where he stayed the rest of the day until he went to bed.

Monday he slept until 11:30! I checked on him every once in a while, and even woke him up at about 8:00 for another dose of Motrin and a drink. We were supposed to go to the Blaze football game with some friends Monday night, but decided we’d better take a raincheck for another time. He was really upset with me for that one. But, again, that puking nightmare.

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