For the love of a dog

Well that was a catchy title, wasn't it?

That would be what we English teacher types call a hook.  And look, it worked.  You're here and reading.

Dog puke.  Oh, honey, let me tell you about dog puke. cha-ching!  That's what we were greeted by after supper on Saturday the 9th.  That's right.  The day before my last post.  And then we had MORE on the 10th.

MORE I tell you. The sound of canine retching will forever ring in my ears.

Oh...the canine?  She's a miniature schnauzer...Diva Chien I think we'll call her.  She certainly is that.

She's also the Demie Diva's BFF.  The dog, in this instance, chose which one of us needs her more, and from day one, it wasn't yours truly. The Diva Chien  keeps the Demie Diva focused.  Keeps her calm.  Serves, to all intents and purposes, as something of a therapy dog.

So, when the revisiting of doggie dinner emesis started, the Demie Diva was a little worried.  So, to be honest, was I.

Monday, we went to the vet for fluids, blood work, barium x-rays, and wait for it...more fluids.  The blood work revealed pancreatitis.

Repeated same on Tuesday.

cha-ching!


Wednesday, the barium STILL had failed to move from the gut.  The vet was more than a little surprised when I said..."crack her belly".  I'm pragmatic.  She's got a blockage.  The x-ray is pretty damn clear on that.

cha-ching!!!


Except that there wasn't a blockage.  Nothing there.  At.  all.

Biopsies were taken.....sing it with me...

CHA-CHING!!!!


And, we waited.  Thursday, we pulled the catheter, and hoped like hell the dog would eat.  She did.  Friday was if-y.

Saturday, she puked, and we were sent home with a bag of Ringer's, some sharps, and instructions on how to give sub-cutaneous fluids.  That's right.  I hung a bag on a cord cleat and ran Ringer's into my dog.

Sunday, she defecated tarry stools.  Dammit.

To the doggie ER we went....

Oh please, oh please, oh please...   Sorry, that was my Visa, asking to be relieved of the constant pain.


And after an overnight stay at the dog hospital, just like Curious George, we took the Diva Chien back to the vet...where...the biopsies were in.

Don't tell me that angels don't watch over even our littlest babies.  That damn x-ray said clear as day that she had a blockage.  The ONLY reason they opened her up was because she "had a blockage".

Instead, she had no intestinal motility whatsoever.  So they took biopsies...one of which indicated a type of Irritable Bowel Disease, which, left untreated, can lead to nasty stomach cancers that don't get detected till it's too late.  

Meanwhile, the Diva Grandparents were spending my inheritance cruising the Baltic, and checking in by email.  The Awesome Auntie is totally overwhelmed by the reality of two smart kids, and is coping as best she can.  This does not include calling randomly to let her sister fall apart, however.

The Demie Diva was handling it far better than a five year old (almost) should.  The extent of the stress was only seen when I noticed seizures...dammit...when the dog wasn't getting better.  That's my girl.  Emotional upset manifests in myoclonus.

So....to recap.  My Visa screams in pain at the sight of the vet's office.  My daughter loves the dog so much that the stress this mess was causes triggered seizures.  I now am buying special food to prevent a recurrence of pancreatitis, have to give the dog prednisone for.freakin.ever, and am seriously contemplating a Gastroenterology consult while I'm in God's Country since the vet school is 5 minutes from my parents' home.

Short version?

I have a special needs kid.

I have a special needs dog.

Seriously?  What else???

Mama Guilt

Yep.  I have it in spades.

I'm looking at the clock, and instead of "oh my sweet baby will be back soon" all I can think is "aw crap".

The simple fact is that she hasn't spent enough time with her dad, and, after his move and her fifth birthday, that's going to start to happen more because she will finally have a room that's hers at his house...and the law in the great state of Alabama says I have to.

Now, on the one hand...this is FABULOUS.  See aw crap above.  I need nap time on days when the dog has me up all night because she's puking her guts out every hour and a half.

On the other hand...this is NOT good.  She will have major transition issues...and on top of a new school, that's going to make my life hell.  I know this.  I know this surely as I know that my name is Diva Maman.

Could I go back to sleep now, and not worry about this?

Spades, I tell you.

Mama Guilt in spads.

Beyond Bonkers: Parenting Your ADHD Child.

Y'all, this is quite clearly a book that someone needs to write.  Of course, that someone can't be the parent of an ADHD child...we're too busy going beyond bonkers.

Dear Lord.  I'm having a heckuva time figuring this stay-at-home parent thing out.  And, to be honest, I'm not entirely sure I'm cut out for it.  Keeping her on a schedule...not letting her just rot her brain in front of the television...these are HARD things to do.

I'm a little ADHD, and a whole lot unwinding myself.


I'm not sure which is doing it to my inability to function more...the unwinding - cause I was  Mach 10 till the end of last week, and lovin' every minute - or my own disability.  I suspect the latter.  It's just WAY too easy for me to get distracted here at home, without the structure of bells at school.

That may, actually, be why I know so many phenomenal teachers who are ADHD...structure forced on us, and the primary unteachable skill of the job involves being able to think on the fly.

But, wait, I digress.  See...that's been my whole week.  And I NEEDED it.

I think she NEEDED it too.  But now, watching her, I'm not entirely sure that we don't need a lower dose of meds for the summer.  She needs meds...there's NO function without them, thanks to the epilepsy devil drug.  But when it's just she and I...I'm not sure.

The only way to assess that may very well be to ...gasp...impose a school-like schedule on the two of us.  You know..."music from x to x; reading time from y to y; and so on" until I'm structured.  I HATE that.

Not the structure part...I can feel my control over my world starting to slip, and I need it too.

No, what I hate is that my child can't just be a child.  I don't want to over program her.  The days of knocking on a door and running around the neighborhood are gone, though, cause even the friends who claim they don't over program their kids actually do.    BUT she HAS to have structure imposed from without.

And that, my friends, is not what summer should be about - even for an almost kindergartener.

So...where is this ADHD free-association going?  The Demie Diva needs a schedule.  I'm not an early childhood specialist, so I welcome suggestions.  I need a schedule, which, to be honest, is easier said than done given the vagaries of a nearly five  year old and her inconsistent other parent.

I'll cite you as a source if I ever write my book...

Lord, it's going to be a long summer.

Summertime

At last.

School for me actually ended a week ago.  Graduation was the Friday of Memorial Day weekend.  The party was had.  The mosquitos ate me alive.  I drank and ate and generally had a blast being with adults.

But then came the greatest week of my summer...that isn't really summer.  Camp.  It's got a longer name, but in the interests of my semi-anonymity, I'll just call it Camp.

It really is a proper noun.

Or an imperative.

A moral imperative that is.

You see, every year, the students at our high school run a four day day camp for rising 3rd and 4th graders from a school in southwest Birmingham.  These kids are from families that are, by and large, working poor.  They can't afford a camp opportunity.  With the help of their principal, 20 or so honor roll students come to our school for fun.  We make new friends.  We hug and cry when the week is gone.

Pretty much, my friends, it's camp.  Except that our students LITERALLY run it.  There are four adults involved in the planning - liaising with the school, coordinating permissions, calling off-site vendors to see if they're involved again this year.  A paid staff of four to six high school kids plan it.  Schedule it.  Solve the problems as they crop up.  Keep the ADHD kid out of the dining hall without shoes...you get it.

And the rest of the counselors?  They volunteer.  They apply.  They are selected.  And then, they work their butts off playing with kids whose home lives are foreign to our children of comfort, if not privilege.  They sweat, get jumped on, play kickball, and ride the school bus to and from Birmingham proper.  It's ALABAMA my friends.  It's nasty hot.  And these 20 or so kids do it for no pay, getting up every morning on their first week of summer vacation, to be back at their school at 8:30 am to play with a bunch of sweaty pseudo-tough babies from Birmingham.

This year, C, in her first camp, was in tears when she read the campers' inscriptions on their memory books: "Culver Creek (an alias)  is the best place in the world, and no one wants to leave." You get the idea.

H, also in her first camp, saw me on the last day and said "You were right.  I'm exhausted.  It's amazing.  I'll be back."

And then, there was the Director of Admission, who came down the morning of the last day and said..."I got emails on this camper.  I've been spoken to by two of your counselors, one paid staffer, and three adults...where is he, and how do we get him back on campus next year...and the year after."  When this little boy left, he left with admissions materials slipped into his bag, a brief explanation of what a scholarship was, and promises to about five of us that "I won't let you down."

How far we have come, in this town that was once known as Bombingham.  How far we still have to go, when urban blight runs rampant at the heart of the Civil Rights Movement.

I did a Flat Stanley project for a friend's son today.  I took the Demie Diva down to Sixteenth Street Baptist Church and Kelly Ingram Park.  I explained to my almost kindergartener that not very long ago, there were mean guys who didn't want her to be friends with J.  because his skin was brown.  The park we were in wasn't a playing park.  It was a praying park;  men like Dr. King and Rev. Shuttlesworth said "no" and at the church that's kitty corner, Mr. McNair's little girl and three others died because mean guys bombed it.

My child processed this as best she could.

To her, it boiled down simply to this..."The King was a nice man.  He wanted the mean guys to quit being mean.  And now he's DAID" (best redneck accent on the last please) 


The Civil Rights Movement according to my almost kindergartener.

Mean people suck.  Nice people don't.