I’m gradually learning that if I have wine in the evening, I have trouble sleeping that night. Gradual connections are being made, one night at a time. Last night I had wine, and then I lay awake. First I kept seeing shadows down the hall, made by cars driving by, and thinking they were the shadows of people creeping around in the house. Then, when I’d reminded myself that a cat can’t walk across our floors without making a creak with every step, I started thinking I heard Furtive Sounds, perhaps PEOPLE TRYING TO BREAK IN. That went NOWHERE GOOD, let me tell you. At one point I realized that my entire body was tense, including clenched fists, and that I’d spent the last five minutes or so imagining defending myself against intruders with a floor lamp: I could bash them with it for awhile, and there would be pointy glass when the bulbs broke, and if I got the upper hand I could use the cord to strangle them. I’d gone on to imagine that they’d lost consciousness–OR SEEMED TO–and what would I do to make SURE they were either dead or incapacitated until the police could get here? If I have learned one thing from movies, it’s that you don’t get overconfident that a Downed Attacker is actually down. So would I do something that would stain both my hardwood floors and potentially my conscience (though I think it’s highly unlikely I’d struggle with my conscience if it was an intruder in a house with my children)? and what would I use to do it? and would it be easy (because I’d be so scared) or would it be much harder than I expected it to be? and boy, I wish there was such a thing as a gun that would materialize only when needed. Or would I…somehow tie his hands and feet (with what? and I couldn’t really leave him to go root around in the dark basement for some rope) and then call 911?

This was when I noticed every single muscle was tightened up and my fingernails were hurting my palms. And also realized that the floor lamp I’d been envisioning grabbing with one swift smooth action-hero-like motion (ha ha, now I’m picturing James Bond wielding an attractive floor lamp) is one we Freecycled a few months back because we never used it. And the other floor lamp in the room is plugged in behind the bureau, so I’d have to shift the bureau, then lean as far as I could and make sound-wave shapes with the cord until the plug wiggled out of the socket, etc.

So I tried to think of something more relaxing, but instead my mind drifted to something that had been bugging me earlier in the day, which was the word “jailbait.” I hadn’t given the word much thought over the years, since I don’t move in circles that have a use for such a word. I started out feeling that the word was mildly icky and wrong, and by the time I’d thought the thing out thoroughly, I was ready to go back and EAGERLY take out some feelings on that imaginary intruder, perhaps by lifting the entire bureau and slamming it onto him. I wish we didn’t even HAVE that word. It isn’t that I don’t UNDERSTAND why we have the word; OH I UNDERSTAND WHY WE HAVE IT. That is the PROBLEM: that I think I see exactly why we have that word, instead of just having the word “teenager.” “Bait” implies a trap, a set-up. Men are being LURED by this child, TRICKED into a TRAP by…the child? society? And so they resist the child, NOT because it would be wrong to get involved with a child, NOT because they are personally icked out by the idea, NOT because they are horrified at the thought of accidentally getting involved with someone so young—but because of the potential for jail, and because they are too wily and clever to be trapped. Jailbait. And congratulating themselves. I hate everybody. Please turn me loose on a building scheduled for demolition, so I can gnaw on it until I feel better.

That title is kind of funny, because as the ENT doctor said, and the nurses said, and all of you with experience with tonsillectomies said, the experience varies WIDELY. But that’s the search term I was using when I was anxiously looking for more information, so that’s what I’m using as the title.

Day One (day of surgery): We had to be at the hospital at 6:30; the surgery was at 7:30; the doctor was coming out to tell me everything went fine at 8:10; they called me back to see her at 8:25; we were headed to our car at 11:00. Between the surgery and the time we went home, Elizabeth mostly dozed. When she did wake up a little, she was cranky and wasn’t interested in the little stuffed hamster I’d bought at the gift shop, but didn’t seem to be in much pain. When she woke around 10:20, though, she was saying “Ow ow ow” and crying, so the nurse brought her a dose of tylenol/codeine, and by the time we were leaving the hospital she was even CHEERY, and was able to walk to the car, and sang along hoarsely with a few songs from the Phineas & Ferb CD on the way home.

At home she had some popsicles and watched some TV and everything was going way better than expected. They’d told us she’d likely nap on and off all day, but she didn’t. Then she got kind of blank-faced and slumpy. Then she started throwing up. She had three sessions of it: afternoon, early evening, later evening. She was miserable. I was highly fretful and lay awake that night worried that I should have called the doctor about the throwing up, worried that she wasn’t holding down either the antibiotic or the painkiller, worried that she would have to go back to the hospital. I felt hugely under-qualified to be handling post-surgical care.

Day Two: She was much better. In my fretful lyings-awake, I’d thought “She HAS to be improved in the morning, or else I’ll call the doctor.” I woke her around 4:00 to take pain medicine, which was a gamble: it could let her absorb it while asleep and non-barfy—or it could make her throw up all over our mattress and herself. Gamble paid off: she woke up better and held down her antibiotic too, and then I kept right on top of giving her the pain medicine every 4 hours exactly. She still felt crummy all day, but NO BARFING, and a couple of times got off the couch and wandered around for a minute before going back. Refused to nap. No smiling. Wouldn’t talk, and would barely shake/nod her head (said her jaw hurt when she moved her head). Ate a little applesauce with flax seed meal stirred in, and maybe 1/4 cup of a non-dairy smoothie I made with banana, strawberries, blueberries, spinach, rolled oats. Also ate popsicles and ice cream. Some interest in Tonsillectomy Presents.

Days Three and Four: Doing prematurely better: up and around, doing some talking, seeming to feel much better, very interested in tonsillectomy presents. Then on the evening of Day 4, two more episodes of throwing up.

Day Five: She woke up crying from the pain but wouldn’t take her pain medicine. She is SIX, but she has been acting THREE. When I put a little medicine in her mouth, she let it dribble out; I tried not to be angry at the sick child; when that failed, I tried to at least mostly HIDE being angry at the sick child. I gave her a Sucrets (numbing cough drop) and then she took the medicine—I think because the cough drop let her back down graciously from the stand-off, rather than because it helped, but maybe some of each. She barely ate anything all day, just a few popsicles. At dinner she wanted to try pizza, so Paul cooked it a little less (normally he makes the crust crispy and the cheese chewy, but he went with a soft crust and melty cheese) and she did eat a few bites. At 8:00 she put herself to bed.

Day Six: For lunch she asked for and ate half a peanut butter and honey sandwich and a cup of milk. But it’s so back and forth: for even a few hours she’ll seem almost normal, but then she’ll be weepy and crabby and saying she has a headache, and she’ll sit still for hours watching a movie. Her voice is different: a little lower, and she’s saying vowels differently, like “hev” instead of “have.” Her jaw/throat still look a little swollen. She’s very nervous about Day Ten, which is when the ENT doctor said there’s usually a setback (because of the scab, and that’s probably all you want to know about it).

Day Seven: She woke up crying in the middle of the night but wouldn’t say why. We’ve been using a system for measuring pain: I hold up my hand, fingers splayed, and I point to whatever finger is farthest to her left and I say “no pain,” and I point to whatever finger is farthest to her right and I say “the worst it’s been so far with this,” and she chooses a finger. It’s always finger 1 (no pain) or 2 (small amount of pain) now, but she complains of headaches, and she says in calmer moments that when she’s crying and won’t tell me why, it’s because she Feels Terrible—not pain really, not queasiness really, but just feeling really really bad all over. So now when she cries and I can’t figure out why, I hold her hand and I tell her to squeeze once for yes, and I ask is it pain? (no squeeze) Nightmare? (no squeeze) Feeling terrible? (squeeze) The squeezing system isn’t because it hurts her too much to talk but because she gets in these stubborn mute phases when she’s upset, and this is a way around that; we use it when she’s not post-surgery, too. This afternoon she went into her room and closed the door, and when I looked in on her later she was asleep.

Day Eight: She doesn’t seem to need the tylenol/codeine for throat pain, exactly, but when I skip a dose she gets crumply and weepy and doesn’t eat or drink. I’m glad the doctor was generous with the prescription so I can keep giving it to her. (But I am feeling some renewed resentment with my OBs, who have always given me a prescription for 1.5 days’ worth of painkiller after c-sections. Thanks, OBs! Obviously it’s exactly the right time to apply Just Say No!) I haven’t been waking her to take it or keeping her on a rigorous every-four-hours schedule—but I’m giving it to her first thing in the morning, two doses during the day, and one more before bed (she’s been sleeping in our room every night, and usually doesn’t go to sleep until we do).

Day Nine (today): Today she has a follow-up appointment with the ENT doctor, and she desperately DOES and desperately DOESN’T want to ask him about the status of the scab. The ENT doctor warned us, by the way, that her breath would likely be “like a chain-smoking alcoholic’s”—but it hasn’t been bad at all. I notice mostly that she smells a little fruity and medicinal.

So! That’s how it’s been going. I’m feeling a little worn out, mostly I think from being cooped up in the house and from trying to get her to eat something nutritious. I had such a good list of soft/pureed foods, and it seems like she’ll eat each one once and then never again. I’m not fretful, because the ENT doctor said he didn’t care if she ate nothing but ice cream for two weeks—but on the other hand I think she’s a lot crankier when she’s subsisting on ice cream. Look, isn’t this a good list of liquid and soft food possibilities?

scrambled eggs
applesauce (with or without flax seed meal)
yogurt
mashed potatoes
peanut butter stirred into ice cream
pudding
Jello
macaroni and cheese
canned fruits
shakes
smoothies of various sorts
bananas
ice cream
popsicles
juice boxes
Pediasure/Ensure

But here is the list she is actually eating:

ice cream

Every time I turn around, this bag of corn startles me:

SarahLena mentioned on Twitter that some days she gets so sick of things being overdramatized on social media. That reminded me of a tip I’m not sure I’ve shared with you: when I’m being bothered by someone Pumping Up The Drama, or Manipulating For Attention, I use the Captain Kirk voice to read whatever they’ve written. You are familiar with William Shatner’s Star Trek acting style? And, more importantly, with the way he spoofs his own acting style, which is something that makes me love him with teary-eyed love? Anyway, that’s the style I use when I read people’s Overblown Drama, and it really helps. Just put Drama Pauses in wherever (they’re funnier if they’re at unnatural breaking points), speak as if acting woodenly, and look intently at the corner where the wall meets the ceiling.

Elizabeth’s tonsillectomy went just fine. She was the first patient of the day on a non-busy day, so she got a lot of attention and everything was done sooner than predicted. I barely had time to have a cafe mocha and a strawberry-cream-cheese danish in the coffee shop before they were calling me back to see her.

Our main nurse was exactly the style I do best with: she told me the whole story in advance, like this: “First I’ll do x, y, z. Then the anesthesiologist will come in, and he will ask you some new questions, but he’ll also repeat some of the questions I already asked you, for safety. Then the doctor will come in, and he will do the same thing, and also he will listen to her heart and lungs again. After he leaves, that’s when you should get dressed in your paper suit.”

After we went home, things were pretty rough. Elizabeth threw up a lot, and she tried to cry about how much her throat hurt but couldn’t cry because it hurt too much, and I lay awake that night fretting that she wasn’t keeping her antibiotic down, and that I didn’t know if I should wake her up for her pain medicine or if that would just make her throw up all over our bed, and that she might have to go back to the hospital (the ENT doctor said that if she couldn’t keep fluids down he would check her right back in and give her an IV). (A measure of my phone anxiety is that I was just as nervous about the possibility of having to make that phone call as I was about having her back in the hospital.)

Another thing making me nervous was all the conflicting information. The post-tonsillectomy sheet from the ENT doctor was different than the post-tonsillectomy sheet from the hospital. The verbal instructions from the ENT doctor were different than the verbal instructions from the nurses. I didn’t know who to follow.

The nurses, I’d think, would be more familiar with the practical effects: the doctor gives his instructions and then is gone like a summer breeze, while the nurses are there caring for the barfing patients. But the doctor is at least in theory the boss/expert of this show, and he’s the one I’d have to answer to if something went wrong as a result of me NOT following his instructions, and it’s hard for a layperson to tell the difference between the nurses who can wear the “Thank a nurse: we keep the doctors from accidentally killing you” t-shirts and the ones who really shouldn’t take that adversarial tone.

Oh, I could ask for clarification when I find differences in instruction? Genius! But often such questions don’t crop up until after I’m home and the potential complication mentioned on the sheet presents itself—so I would need to call. And more importantly, ask WHOM? If I ask the doctor, he’ll tell me to follow his instructions; if I ask the nurses, they’ll tell me to follow theirs. And both will have good reasons!

You know, maybe the professionals could work these differences out among themselves, rather than putting patients in the middle to figure it out and make guesses and “trust their guts” (which I find seems to work only in hindsight, during the self-congratulating/rebuking stage of a decision). I have EVEN LESS of a medical degree than either of the two groups, so I don’t really care how much “YOU have to be the ADVOCATE of your HEALTH!!” is going around, I am not QUALIFIED for that POSITION. Which is why the Large Checks go FROM me rather than TO me: I’m paying people with education, expertise, and experience to tell me what to do, because “my gut” doesn’t know anything ABOUT tonsillectomy recovery.

(She was way better on the second day, thank goodness.)

Popular kid breakfasts at our house:

• spoonful of peanut butter, cup of milk
• half a peanut butter sandwich, cup of milk
• dry cereal (a “compromise” variety such as Cinnamon Life, Honey Nut Cheerios, Frosted Mini-Wheats), cup of milk (or in Edward’s case, orange juice, since it helps to absorb the iron in the cereal)
• banana, cup of milk
• cinnamon toast, cup of milk
• muffin, cup of milk
• bowl of yogurt, cup of orange juice
• two hard-boiled egg whites with salt, cup of chocolate milk (this is only William so I’m not sure it counts as “popular”—but on the other hand it’s what he eats most mornings so it’s popular with HIM)

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My last trip to Target didn’t have much in the way of fun clearance (the clothing has been marked down at a snail’s pace recently, and when I did buy a few clearance kid t-shirts I noticed after washing them that they’re now cotton-poly instead of cotton, so that was a non-score), but I did bring home some things that make me feel happy and satisfied every time I walk past them:

This year I remembered ahead of time that on the first day of school the children will be coming home with piles of forms that need to be filled out with information that is the same as last year’s and the same as each other’s (could this process not be even SLIGHTLY computerized?), AND a request from each teacher for antibacterial wipes and facial tissues. Then I feel all panicky and frantic, as if the teacher will think that my week-long delay in sending in the requested items reflects badly on me as a parent. Target had both items on nice sales, so I got enough for each child to bring in a container of each and still have one of each left over.

I also got Elizabeth’s lunch box for first grade; she chose the owl one. (It inspired this week’s Milk and Cookies post on lunch boxes.) I wonder how many of our children are going to school with that cute owl lunch box? My mother is finding it fun to see the owl craze of the 1970s back in such full force.

This morning when I woke up I was confident it was a weekend day, and in fact I thought, “I wonder why Paul is getting ready to take a shower already? Oh, well, it doesn’t matter, I will just continue sleeping luxuriously, since none of the kids are up yet.” And then it emerged that he was in fact done with his shower rather than preparing for it, which meant it was my turn, and anyway that was not a very good start to the day.

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Yesterday the hospital called to assign us Elizabeth’s tonsillectomy surgery time for Monday (we need to be there at 6:30 a.m.), and then I ate Nutella right out of the container for awhile. But I did feel better after the call, because it was one of those nurses who is firm and confident and yet caring and understanding, and she had a comfortingly gravelly voice. It made me feel like this whole thing was totally routine and fine and everything was under control—and yet also like she was fully aware that the routineness/fineness from the hospital’s point of view didn’t mean that it wasn’t weird/non-fine for the parents who don’t see this every day. Really, she was very good at her job. Nurses make so much difference at times like this.

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We got Rob’s school supply list in the mail, and it says he needs erasable pens. Do you have a brand you like? The last time I used erasable pens (back in school, I think), the technology had advanced only to the point of adding an eraser to the top, but not yet to the point of having the eraser WORK.

Last weekend I was at the liquor store buying some wine to bring with me to my brother and sister-in-law’s house. Annnnnnd I reached into my Big Bulky Purse, only to remember I’d already switched my credit card to my Small Cute purse. Very embarrassing. Fortunately I live relatively close, so I zoomed home, got my Small Cute purse, and zoomed back to pay for the wine.

Mid-week, I stopped at the bank. We were urgently in need of cash: the last time I’d stopped, the machine was out of cash; the time before, I was sixth in line and I waited more than five minutes and the line didn’t move at all, and we had frozens in the car so I had to give up. I was relieved to remember to stop again, and then I discovered I didn’t have my checkbook (which has my ATM card in it), so I had to just leave. When I got home, I found I’d absentmindedly put the checkbook away with my calculator after balancing, instead of putting it back in my purse.

This morning, I went to the grocery store, and discovered at checkout my wallet wasn’t in my purse. Which I felt pretty stupid telling the cashier, because I was holding a wallet as I said it—but it was my Assorted Stuff wallet (member cards, department store credit cards, coupons) rather than my Absolute Essentials wallet (driver’s license, CREDIT CARD). And my grocery store doesn’t take checks (I DID have my checkbook this time) without an application process, which I have never done because I never pay with a check. And I kept rummaging with increasing desperation through my uncooperative Giant Purse, because the wallet COULD NOT be gone, and yet it continued to be gone. So I pulled out my bank card, which has a Visa symbol on it, and I’ve never used it to pay for anything so I hope that hasn’t screwed up everything in the world. It said “debit” on it, but she said it wouldn’t go through except as a credit. OH WHAT HAVE I DONE?? (My wallet, luckily, was on the floor of the coat closet.)

I don’t know if I’m hoping you’ll tell me you do the same thing all the time, or if I’m hoping you’ll encourage me to check in to a nice quiet assisted-living facility.