Liquid

For a variety of reasons, last week was a trying one here in St Charles…and I blame liquid in every case.

Liquid From My Daughter’s Mouth

I awoke Monday morning, showered and then lifted Norah from her crib to supply her breakfast bottle. She downed about half of the eight ounces offered and promptly expelled each of the consumed ounces right back at me. After a quick sopping up and removal of soaked items of clothing, she was happy and seemed interested in the remaining 4 ounces in the bottle. So I let her have it. She finished and then crawled over to her toy shelf where she again spewed all fluid from her poor stomach. Within seconds, she was a smiling child sitting in a pool of white.

Luckily, we already had an appointment with the doctor in the afternoon for her nine-month check-up. So, as I went off to work for the morning, Moonshot continued her attempts to trick Norah’s body into accepting nourishment of any kind. She happily consumed…then just as happily rejected. Norah’s first illness was, while disgusting, being handled with remarkable pleasantry.

The doctor said that she had seen many cases of this virus making the rounds. We would spend a few days with the fluid shooting from the mouth…then we would spend a few days with the fluid shooting from the other end. We were to pay special attention to hydration and were given several methods for testing Norah’s moisture content. We were also to be wary of the latter half of this disease since it was during that process that it could spread. Hand washing and disinfecting was to be a priority if we had any chance of escaping the same fate as our daughter.

I didn’t have high hopes. Don’t get me wrong…we’re pretty clean people. But I have what I feel is a fairly realistic appreciation for just how much poo is in my environment. Sure, we’re not medieval city dwellers wallowing in our own filth, but the clean, sterile environment that we like to pretend we inhabit…is a fairy tale. I stood in the doctor’s office thinking about the episode of the Mythbusters in which they attempted to see if a toothbrush kept in the bathroom would get fecal matter on it. At the end of the experiment the answer was, of course, yes. But more so, even the control group kept “safely” in the kitchen was contaminated. It’s everywhere. And for the next few days in our home…it would be virus-laden as well.

Tuesday continued with little or no food making its way into Norah. Her multiple chins disappeared and we had to tighten the safety belts on her high chair in order to secure this suddenly skinny child. But her spirits, aside from an occasional moment of self-pity expressed in squirmy moans, remained high.

Liquid From My Daughter's Rear

It was on Wednesday that the evil virus put its escape plan into action. By enflaming Norah’s intestines, it ensured that she would be unable to filter out the fluid used in the digestion process, thus creating its own soupy escape pod that was far more likely to come in contact with another victim. Clever little virus.

We took this as a personal attack.

And so it was that our home became a battlefield. The virus launched volley after volley of mortar rounds…explosions of such volume they made me jump on more than one occasion. Outfits were lost in the struggle, cut off Norah rather than risk pulling them over her head. Bath time because perilous business: Lather, Rinse, Contaminate, Evacuate, Scrub, Refill, Repeat. Our hands became pruny brillo pads from excessive washing. And our brave, little daughter lost her smile amidst the brutal fighting.

Slowly, her appetite returned and the diapers returned to normal. By Sunday, we had our Little Lutine back. She’s crawling happily and eating almost as much as she did pre-illness. Her little immune system has overcome its first major skirmish and she should be proud of how it handled itself. And, as I type this on Monday…neither Moonshot nor I have shown signs that the virus made the leap. I blame 1 part awesome immune systems, 1 part strategic cleanliness, and 1 part blind luck.

No Liquid in the Faucet

On Friday morning, Moonshot called me at work. “They wouldn’t shut off our water for being a couple days late, would they?” We ran out of checks last week and pushed a few bills further than we should have while we waited for a new box to arrive. I told her I was pretty sure they wouldn’t. I had her check the basement just to make sure there was no lake down there that could explain our empty pipes. When the basement proved dry, we called the water folks and discovered that the road construction over on Elm Street had hit a water main and that they hoped to have water back on later in the day.

“How,” my wife asked, “am I supposed to clean up diarrhea with no water?”

Jugs of frozen water were pulled from the freezer and general preparations were made to deal with sanitization sans faucet. Luckily, the water was returned by noon or so and the issue faded into the background as simply another brick in the wall of a frustrating week.

Liquid From the Sky

To better set the mood for the mental weight we labored under last week, it feels significant to mention we didn’t see the sun through all of this. Clouds rolled in on Monday and stayed until Saturday. Drizzle and downpours alternated all week and downed our already damped spirits. Tuesday even found some small bit of that rain in the unfinished half of our basement…soaking into our Halloween decorations and reminding me that I was supposed to clean the gutters last month.

Quarantined due to sickness, we were denied even the sunlight that could have streamed through the windows to cheer us. So we sat in the house and nursed Norah. I, at least, was offered the daily escape of work, but my wife was granted no such pardon. So each night I would offer to let Moonshot go out…anywhere…but my exhausted wife would decline, opting instead to just prop her feet up and relax for a while. By Friday, she had not left the house all week. She couldn’t take Norah among people due to the clever virus. She couldn’t take her normal walks nor even sit out on the back patio due to rain. On Friday evening, her birthday, she finally cracked. In a storm of loud, foot-stomping, door-slamming frustration she left to get some groceries and pick up a meal from a restaurant. I, for my part, did my best to comfort the still sick Norah while pondering how I could be failing so completely to deliver a happy birthday to my wife. Moonshot returned in a better mood, embarrassed at her loss of control…I could only answer honestly that I was shocked she held out all week.

Liquid on the heart

Behind the scenes in all of the damp grayness of the week, hovers my Aunt Gimpy’s health. I’ve mentioned on this site before that her body is in rough shape and it seems like it just keeps getting worse. I’ll not go into her entire medical history, but they are currently having grave difficulties with her heart and the massive amounts of fluids that have accumulated there. I, and the rest of my family, have our ears turned toward Kansas City awaiting news. Encouraging thoughts are welcome.

Evaporation

In short, there was much ado about liquid last week and we could have happily done without every one of the issues listed above. But aside from my Aunt, it seems we’ve come out on the other side of it. The sun is shining, a healthy and happy Norah smiled and waved to me as I left for work. And Moonshot ended up having a good weekend. We were even able to go play some Bunco on Saturday night with the O’Fallon Crew.

Hmm, I’m trying to find a way to end this post with an insightful comment about liquid-based problems and evaporation or maybe something poetic about the water cycle, but all I can think of is Little Orphan Annie. And I’m not closing with a musical number. Since my lunch break is over…it doesn’t look like I’ll get my clever wrap-up. Ah well…you, my fine reader, deserve better than a bad water analogy anyway.

Here’s hoping a dry week.