My lovely girlfriend has been wanting to keep her four nephews (ages 4, 6, 10 and 12) for a week or so. They live about 600 miles away, and she wanted to spend time with them and get to know them a little better. Now let me fill you in on my Miss Max. She has never had children. She did help raise a couple of kids for a while, but overall, she has not much experience with kids. Especially not a whole herd of them.
But, supportive partner that I am, I agreed to the visit. The parents of these young folk are away on a (much deserved) cruise, and graciously consented to allow us to keep their progeny while they are away. We met them at a nearby pub Saturday (today is only Wednesday!), ate dinner, and proceeded to our home to get them settled in. The parents, John and Lynn, gave kisses all around and left us with the boys.
Not 10 minutes after they'd left, the youngest one approached me with some sort of smelly mess on his shirt and informed me "I frew up." He did make it to the bathroom, but most of the emesis was on his shirt, the toilet, and the rug in front of the toilet. Hey, no problem. I have raised kids. So I got him stripped down, plopped in the tub, and got the washing machine going. (And I must say, it really hasn't stopped since.) Not so bad. Except our 90 pound English and American bulldog mix has decided she really doesn't like children. She already has an aversion to tall people, loud people, quiet people, strangers, men, some women, other dogs, my parrots, and just about anybody who isn't me or Max, so I shouldn't have been surprised. But I was surprised at her grouchy snapping and near constant barking at the boys. They weren't much pleased either. There was much confusion and loudness, but finally we got the boys and dogs separated and the boys bedded down for the night. We had high hopes that Bailey the Bulldog would somehow overnight become accustomed to the idea that these small, loud people were now (if only for a week) part of our household and learn to tolerate them
She didn't. When she woke to find a tiny boy curled up in the bed between her two mamas, she made her unhappiness clear by trying to bite him. Something was going to have to give. Max's complete sympathy was with Bailey, whose home had been "invaded". She really felt that Bailey's responses to the boys was justifiable. But I persuaded her that we had to keep all the boys alive to deliver back to their parents when they returned so she finally agreed to let me drug the dog. Being a medical person certainly has its advantages. I was able to obtain some Valium. Max was very reluctant to give Bailey drugs, so she insisted on a low dose. I gave the dog 5 milligrams, along with an aspirin on the assumption that her hips might be hurting and adding to the grumpiness. That dose did slow her down enough to give the boys a fighting chance, but it did not really diminish her disgruntlement at their presence. I slipped her another one without Max's knowing it, and she calmed down a good bit more. Since then, I have given her 1 1/2 tabs or a couple of times 2 tabs for each dose, and she has behaved much better. I am considering making the Valium a permanent part of her diet.
Two of the other dogs are Boston Terrors. Any of you familiar with the breed are aware of how excitable they are. Their dispositions aren't violent, but they can cause injury just by dint of their enthusiasm. Our Paddie and Sophie are amazing jumpers, lickers, and scratchers. I think the children actually ended up more afraid of them than of Bailey.
The best dog, a mongrel named Sadie, of usually a serene disposition, simply stood back and barked. And barked. And barked. What with the biting, leaping, barking, and the amazingly high decibel level of boy children -- it doesn't even bear thinking about. Never mind that it is still going on. Bailey has achieved a measure of serenity, however, with her chemically induced stupor.
We're off to a great start. We made it through the first couple of days with nothing worse than scrapes or scratches. The kids' grandfather had requested that we bring them to him so he could take them out to supper, and Max and I are delighted with a few hours' peace. We had picked up a couch from Goodwill that some friends had purchased but didn't have a truck to retrieve and are planning to do some grocery shopping when my cell phone rang. It was a friend who lives just a few miles from our house. "Where are you?" Lori demanded -- unlike her usually pleasant greetings. "Uh -- we're in town, doing some shopping. What's the matter?" I asked, with an knot in my stomach that developed as soon as I heard her brusque tone. "There's a fire. It's getting close to your house. You need to get home."
Max is demanding "What? What?" while I'm trying to get the pertinent details from Lori. Our area has been unusually dry and windy recently, with conditions ripe for a fire. Considering that people around here are prone to burning their lawns in springtime to rid them of leaves and pine straw, fire has been a real worry. (Unlike more typical years with daily thunderstorms and 90% humidity all the time.) Not far from where we live, new subdivisions have been being built too, and it is not uncommon for the bulldozers to pile up the fallen trees, roots, and trash into the center of the building site and set fire to it and leave. However it started, the fire was raging and jumping from one area to another. Before long it seemed there were several fires going.
I got off the phone and gave Max the bad news. We are both glad the boys aren't with us right now. In September, we visited them at their home in Alabama, and the first night we were there, they had a house fire. no one was hurt, but their kitchen was destroyed, and the whole house had smoke damage. The kids had been traumatized, and we certainly didn't want them in the midst of another fire disaster. We called their grandpa and explained the situation. Fortunately, he agreed to keep them overnight so we could see about our home without worrying about them.
When we got home, Lori was there. The firefighters had asked her to leave saying that we were under a voluntary evacuation. She chose to stay so if things got looking too bad before we got home, she could at least load the animals up and flee. It was very smoky, but the fire was still about a quarter of a mile away. We did load the animals up and took them to Lori's house. I was frantic with worry about my parrots. They don't tolerate smoke very well. I was scared I'd find them dead when we got home, just from smoke. But they were OK. A neighbor told us the firemen had told her to wet down her house with a water hose to try to keep sparks from starting a fire in the pine straw that inevitably collects on a roof around here. We decided to do the same. The boys and animals were taken care of. Our plan for the goats and pig was that if we had to leave, we'd open the gate to their pasture before we left and hope for the best.
Friends showed up -- some we called and some who heard about the fire and couldn't get us on the phone so came to see about us. We moved vehicles, tractor, propane tanks -- anything with fuel in it -- away from the house -- after putting a few necessary possessions in the vehicles. There wasn't much to try to save. I mean, the house and outbuildings are stuffed with stuff, but in circumstances where you have to try to decide what to save, not much of it seems very important. Once the living creatures are safe, out concerns were really just certain papers, my laptop, our jewelry boxes (not that we have expensive jewels, just mainly sentimental things) and some clean underwear.
Those crucial things taken care of, we pulled some chairs into a circle, got some beers, and sat around and watched Tina continue dancing on the roof with the water hose, thoroughly wetting it down. As she said, why pass up an opportunity to get wet?
We talked. We occasionally walked to the end of the road to check the progress of the firefighters. They told us finally that even though the fire wasn't out, they had it contained. It was in some woods so thick they couldn't get equipment in to put it out, but once it burned out to them, they could finish it off. Soon we saw them leaving, and we disbanded.
Max and I started to unload our belongings, but soon decided to just leave them. We fetched our dogs home, but left the birds at our friends house because it was still very smoky. We went home and showered and got in bed and put our Nip/Tuck videos on and forgot our own dramas for a while.
I hadn't told Max that I had been having chest pain. I have a bout of hypochondria about once or twice a year. I was overdue for one, and I really didn't want to go through a trip to the hospital only to find out that I was imagining my ailment. And with everything else going on, it was just horrible timing. The boys were delivered to us the next morning, and I was feeling horrible. My chest hurt. The pain radiated up into my left jaw and down my left arm. I broke out in sweats. I felt nauseated. I couldn't stop dwelling on the fact that my mother had a heart attack at the age of 41. (I'm 51.) I finally talked to Max and told her how I was feeling. She asked a me what I would do for a patient having the same symptoms as what i was having, and I had to admit I would send them to the hospital. So she got on the phone and arranged for the kids to be watched (friends! what would we do without them? The same Tina who stood on our roof the previous day and soaked it down happened to be off work and game immediately.) Max took me to the hospital.
I have always thought that if one went to the ER and said "chest pain" they would be taken care of immediately. And I didn't go to the Podunk hospital out in our rural area. I knew how bad they could be. We went to the big city hospital, where, it turns out, there isn't even a human to talk to where you check in. There was a sign instructing me to fill out a slip with my name, date of birth, social security number, and complaint. I dutifully filled out the requested information, with my complaint being "chest pain, shortness of breath, nausea, and sweating." If someone came to
my office with those complaints, I wouldn't even let them sit down in the waiting room. They'd be swept back for a stat EKG. But not in the big city hospital. I got to sit in the waiting room for about 25 minutes before someone noticed that my slip said chest pain. At that point I was taken back for vital signs, (which, admittedly were normal) and sent back to the waiting room because they didn't have an empty gurney. After 20 more minutes (45 total -- I suppose not bad for an ER wait) I was taken to a cubicle with a stretcher, chair for my significant other, monitors, and a TV. I was instructed to get on the stretcher and Max and I were left to our own devices for a while longer. If I had gone into complete cardiac arrest, well, I was somewhere with monitors and shit, so I imagine they might have had a fair chance of resuscitating me. The nurses were nice. They stopped in occasionally to tell me someone would be with me soon.
And hour or so later I finally saw a doctor. She got a quick but thorough history, did the required heart and lung check, and ordered an EKG, labs, oxygen, and chest xray. I was a bit dismayed -- I was starting to feel a bit better and wished I could just leave, but once you get yourself entangled in emergency care, it is hard to get disentangled. I figured that the rest had done me good, but might as well see this thing through and be sure that I was really ok.
And I was. My vitals stayed stable. My EKG was the most normal I've ever had. My chest xray showed my old healed (in two pieces, but healed) clavicle fracture, and nothing else. What really reassured me was that my cardiac enzymes were normal. Four and a half hours later, Max and I left feeling pretty certain I wasn't about to die unless a meteor became a meteorite on my head. I felt bad about having inserted a faux emergency into our already crazy vacation, but Max was sweet about it and said she was just glad to know I was OK.
On the way home we returned phone calls and got some groceries for our young guests. We'd made it through another day.
