So Long, Suckers

Do you know how hard it is to try to explain to a three-year-old why he can't have Goldfish crackers? Those things are like cheddar flavor-blasted crack amphibians to this kid. Trying to tell him that they will shred a throat that's still pretty much completely raw is not going over well. All he knows is that he wants Goldfish. Now. Dammit.

It's been a hellish couple of days. I knew it would be, but kind of chose not to dwell on it till the hour of doom approached. Tate's ENT finally suggested getting his tonsils out when we saw him on Friday, and since I decided I would do anything to possibly, perhaps make the fevers of ruin go away, I jumped at the idea. The fevers had to stop.

So we get to the hospital at 6:30 yesterday morning. Tate was pretty chilled out on the drive over and walking into the hospital, but as we were standing in line to register, I watched the expression on his face change to sheer panic as he started to look around. You could see in the dialogue going on in his little brain. "Talking to a bored woman while she gives us paperwork and a bracelet? Check. Weird smell of sick people, rubber gloves and crappy food? Check. Slightly odd pictures of Jesus in the operating room peeking over doctors' shoulders hanging on the walls? CHECK. OH GOD." He started to panic, wailing "I don't LIKE the hosipal! I don't want to BE in the hosipal!!" I knew then that the party had officially started.

We were then checked into our quaint, lovely 10 ft by 10 ft cage of a room surrounded by other little cages and hunkered down to wait. FOREVER. After almost 3 hours of listening to Tate scream that he wanted to go home and watching him chuck shoes at Eric's head, they were finally ready for him. I think the nurses at the desk were relieved when it was finally time to sedate the kid. I kind of expected one of them to slip the anesthesiologist a tenner and whisper to give Tate a heavy load of the real good stuff.

Walking down the hall towards the operating room was extremely difficult. Tate just had this look of sheer confusion and alarm on his face as he held onto Snowy the Monkey with a death grip. We then had to hand him over to Joe the Nurse and watch them walk through the double doors without us. Seeing Tate's face peering over Joe's shoulder at us as the tears started to fall was just about the crappiest thing ever. Seriously. Nothing like knowing your child is terrified and you can't be there to comfort him. Good times. I was a wreck as we sat in the waiting room and listened to two obese old men bellow across the room with each other about their dead wives and various medical complaints.

Luckily, the surgery was over within 15 minutes and they brought him out about a half hour after that. We could hear him crying before we saw him, and when they did bring him through the doors I just about burst into tears myself. Kid looked like he had been ridden hard and put away wet. And of course, there was the IV in his hand. I knew that was going to be a problem, since during our last hospital stay Tate had declared his IV to be his mortal, eternal enemy and set about finding any way to destroy it. I had a feeling this would be "Tate vs IV, vol. 2".

Guess what? I was RIGHT!! Whee for us! We got to spend the next 4 hours trying to keep him from yanking the stupid thing out of his hand and getting whacked in the head for our efforts. He was intent on making that IV suffer for what it had done to him. All of this vengeance-seeking was of course accompanied by window-shattering screams, which I'm going to say was probably not such a good thing to be doing with a throat that had just had stuff carved out of it. After awhile the nurse poked her head in and said "Isn't there anything you can do to get him to stop screaming?" I wanted to reply "Well, yeah, a bunch of things. I just don't feel like doing them. Screaming makes me happy and serene. I FREAKING LOVE IT." I just had to laugh when I thought about how we had dutifully warned the nurses about Tate's Tateness and they all said "Ohhh, don't worry. We've seen it all before, we're used to it, blah blah blah." Right.

So he finally passed out on my lap and slept for a couple hours. As soon as he woke up, the nurse took a look at his throat and said "Okhelooksfinelet'sgetyououtofhereI'llgetthepaperworkberightback" and sprinted out of the room. We were out of there about 4 minutes later.

And now we're home and having epic Goldfish battles every 45 minutes or so. I'm thinking the little guy's probably getting tired of Popsicles after having 4,000 of them in the last 24 hours, but I can't start feeding him soft foods til tomorrow. I'm surprised he hasn't resorted to picking food up off the floor or out of the garbage and hastily stuffing it in his mouth. I mean, he sees Nora doing it all the time, you'd think it would be at the forefront of his mind.

It's been just loads of fun around here. Tantrums at every turn. Puke splattered all over my kitchen floors, cabinets, and refrigerator, courtesy of Nora. She decided she just had to join in the extremely gratifying process of making Mommy's sanity completely perish, and what better way to do that than hork up blueberries all over the floor? Perfect.

But honestly, if doing this makes the fevers stop, I have no regrets or qualms about it. We couldn't keep going on like that...it was taking a huge toll on every one of us. I can take a week or two of pure, unadulterated hell if it's worth it in the end. I may come out of it missing a frontal lobe or something, but it'll be worth it. Those suckers have been removed and disposed of in an undignified fashion. Screw you, tonsils!!

And once again, I'm humbled and blown away by all the fabulous people we know who have offered help, prayers, good thoughts, Popsicles, and wine. Cool people make everything better.