sick

Annabelle has pneumonia. She's been wheezing and coughing like crazy, she can't talk without losing her breath after every couple of words. Fever. Not good. She didn't eat anything yesterday, and in one final attempt, I gave her a pink doughnut with sprinkles on it. She was overjoyed, and spent the next 20 minutes poking and staring at it. But she couldn't eat it. That's how i knew she was REALLY sick.

Dustin said that i should take her to the hospital. She immediately starts crying. "Please, no please no, not the hospital!!!" Dustin convinces her to go because they have candy there and she can have one piece (even though it's 10 pm) so she tells me, "Mama, I've been thinkin about it and I think Daddy has a good idea for me to go to the hospital. (all of this between gasps for air) They have candy there and that just might make me feel better. Daddy had a great idea!!!"

She and I pull out of the driveway and she says, "Mama, what are they gonna do to me?" I explain in the simplest of terms that they will find out what is making her sick and give her special medicine that Mommy and Daddy don't have at home. She asks very very quietly, "Mama, are they gonna cut out my throat?"
"What??? NO! Absolutely not. They don't ever cut out little girls throats."
"Oh, good. Cause that's what I was thinkin about when i was getting dressed to go to the hospital and i don't want them to cut out my throat."

We get there and she is clinging to me in one, sweaty, shivering, gasping heap. The nurses are so sad to see her in such a condition, and bump us in front of an entire waiting room of people to see the doctor. (why did the waiting room of this small hospital have like 20 grown adults in it at 10pm??)

She was a trooper. They ran tests and gave her breathing treatments to control her breathing. Chest X-rays. She said (of the x-ray machine) ,
"Mama, that camera is WAY bigger than my camera. But it's not pink." Then she kind of smirked a little bit, as though she pitied their pathetic grey camera.

At one point, she was crying in pain from something they did, and I couldn't do anything about it. I stood across the room and cried with her. I handed her a tiny orange tootsie roll to clutch and try to take her mind off the pain and focus on the special treat that awaited her.
When it was over, she looked at me and said, "Mama, I REALLY love this candy." As if the pain was softened by the thought of Tootsie Roll Midgies.

During the breathing treatment that was to last about 5 minutes, she said, "Okay, I think that's enough now. Really, I'm lots better now. Let's just stop now. Okay?" The doctor and the two nurses just laughed and laughed.

Annabelle gets SO sincere when she is ill. When I stepped out of her line of sight to grab a kleenex, she said, "Mama, where are you going? It won't be fair for you to leave me all alone to be scared."

Shortly after, they sent us home. She woke up in the night, throwing up her antibiotics and her little orange tootsie roll. She took a bath, some tylenol, and an ancient family miracle elixir...Sprite. I cradled her like a baby and rocked her to sleep.

I came home tonight to a new girl. She is "all better". Still on meds, and her inhaler, but eating and playing and so so loving. She told me,
"Mama, I did really good at the hospital. I was delightful."
I said, "Delightful, eh? Where'd you hear that word?"
She said, "I just made it up. It's like "Light-ful, but with "duh" on it. Duh-Light-ful. "
And she was, and is, Delightful.

posted by mindi11 @ 3/24/2006 10:15:00 PM