R has an ear infection.  Pretty par for the course…he tends to get these.  This one caught me off guard, however, because his ear infections almost always surface the night before we’re about to get on an airplane somewhere, so….surprise!  Maybe this is progress.

He was complaining of ear pain yesterday morning, so I gave him a dose of motrin and sent him to school.  I had heard somewhere that most ear infections are actually viral, so I like to wait things out before dosing him up on antibiotics.

Um, yeah.  The school called an hour into the day, asking me to pick him up.  Poor guy was in serious pain.

I called the doctor’s office and got an appointment…in one hour.  So we had to last one hour.  Just. One.

But R was, by now, literally screaming in pain, the noise irritating/scaring Pax to such a degree that he was also screaming, and I’m driving all crazy, not sure where to go because we’re in that awful half-way point where going home was too far but we needed to last the hour somehow.

It was ugly.

In desperation, I went to CVS looking for Tylenol (when one isn’t enough, alternate, right?).  What a gong show.  I’m carrying P (who is too heavy to be carried comfortably) as he tries to pull my shirt down for a little comfort nursing after all of the car trauma, R is screaming for me to carry him, holding his ear with one hand and has the other arm wrapped around my leg.  I grimly gimp-walk (step-drag, step-drag) into CVS and head straight for the back, the sound of us coming echoing out to Pittsburgh.

Of course the Children’s Tylenol isn’t located by the adult Tylenol….OR in the baby section with the infant Tylenol…so after yelling out asking loudly “Children’s Tylenol???”, about 5 random shoppers fall over themselves trying to show me where it is.

We (the entire gong show) sit right down in the aisle and start ripping open the package.  Pax gets busy whipping stuff off the shelves.  I grit my teeth and try to focus on R, still crying.  A pharmacist (bless her heart) hurries over with a dosage dropper and helps me determine dosage.  I get the medicine into R, and give him a hug.  After a minute, I get him to sit down (still crying) as I tuck P under my arm like a football and fire the displaced contents back onto the shelves.

I get up.  P is still squirming and screaming his frustration.  R is still crying, holding his ear and my leg.  We gimp back (step-drag, step-drag) to the front of the store.  Shoppers in line part to let us through.  I pay.  We gimp (step-drag, step-drag) out.  CVS management breathes a collective sigh of relief.  Crazytown is gone.

I can’t remember what else we did to kill that hour, but at some point, the drugs kicked in and R calmed down.  Which chilled out Pax.  But OMG WHAT A MORNING.  So you can imagine my mood when Crabby Nurse #2 has the audacity to imply that someone (aka us) smells.

Nurse, (about to leave examining room):  You need to change a diaper.

Me:  What?  Oh!  I do?  (I smell Pax’s bottom – it’s clean.)

Nurse:  Yes.  You can’t leave a dirty diaper in here.

Me:  Well, he’s not dirty, so we’re all fine here.

Nurse:  Well someone has a dirty diaper.

Me (totally confused): Uh….Who?

Nurse (points at Raines):  It must be him.  You can’t leave the dirty diaper in here.

Me (horrified): He doesn’t wear diapers!!

Nurse (peeved):  Well.  I guess someone farted then.

Me:  I guess you farted.

I did not actually say that.  But I really, really, really wish I had.  It was riiight there on the tip of my tongue.  But at least I had a swift retort.  And I certainly didn’t thank her.

Baby steps, people.  Baby steps.

xo,

S