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I’ve figured out why I’ve been so stressed yesterday and today. For months I have been telling myself that as soon as we open preorders for the book we’ll be able to plan our future financially. That was a mistake. It is going to take at least another week before we have enough information to begin forming plans. The opening sales for the book have been wonderful, but I’ve been unable to be happy about it because of continued limbo when I expected to be limboless. I need to stop expecting all of the money to arrive today.

Also, I didn’t have time to recover from the emotional roller coaster of the weekend before I climbed onto the emotional rollercoaster of preorders. No wonder I’m feeling a bit queasy.

Gleek is recovering well. She is crankier and sleepier than usual, but her appetite is picking up and she is playing.

Patches seems to have reverted to his usual secure and happy self.

Book pre-orders opened yesterday. We’ve already broken even on the books. Now we just need to see how long the flow of orders will last. Will it bring in enough money to fill our financial reservoirs so that Howard doesn’t have to go get a day job? I can’t help feeling like the first 48 hours of preorders will determine the outcome. I can’t stop being stressed.

We’ve recieved the press match copy of Schlock Book 1. It is beautiful! You should all go buy one now.

http://www.schlockmercenary.com/preorder/

The following realization came in response to my sister’s comment on a previous post. The realization is important enough that I want it to have it’s own entry rather than being lost in the comments:

Your comment helped me realize why I’m so upset over my management of Gleek’s illness. I have parented for almost 11 years. I know my kids and I know childhood illnesses. I’ve been Doctor Mom for chickenpox, ear infections, strep throat, colds, stomach flu, roseola, hand foot & mouth disease, fifth disease, and assorted viruses. These days when I take my kids to the doctor, it is because I know exactly what is wrong. I just need the doctor to confirm my diagnosis and give me a prescription for antibiotics.

Gleek’s illness was new. I’ve never had a child with a bladder infection or kidney infection before. I failed to diagnose it in advance. I feel like I should have been able to do so because I’ve had multiple bladder infections and a kidney infection myself. But she wasn’t exhibiting the classic symptoms. This illness fooled me and several doctors as well. I need to stop punishing myself for not being smarter than the doctors.

This past weekend was pretty stressful. I didn’t realize exactly how stressful until last night after I put the kids into bed. With no kids needing me to be strong I wandered into Howard’s office where, two minutes into an unrelated conversation, I burst into tears. Once the storm was over I was able to realize that all during the medical crisis I’d bottled up my emotions. I put them away so that I could manage things. It should not surprise me that when I pulled the cork out emotions went fizzing all over the room. Howard held me and told me it was all okay and that I’d done a fantastic job. In times of crisis it is important that I be able to shove emotion out of the way. It is equally important that I deal with the emotions later.

I’m still sorting through my feelings and thoughts this morning. This medical adventure will probably cost us 2 months worth of living expenses because we carry a pretty high deductible on our insurance. This would have thrown me into a financial panic two months ago. But Howards press match book arrived this morning, we’ll be opening pre-orders sometime today or first thing tomorrow. The sale of the book will change our financial future. The loss of two months expenses doesn’t much affect the fact that the future of Howard’s cartooning depends on the sale of the book. However the sudden medical expenses do force me to take a close look at the tightrope we’re walking. Our savings net is nowhere near big enough. Right now I really want to book to sell well so that I can stash money and build a bigger net. Today life feels a bit more precarious in more ways than one.

I’m not the only one who feels like life is more precarious than it was two days ago. Patches also had a delayed reaction last night. From his perspective mommy just disappeared for 36 hours. I don’t even think I told him goodbye when I departed to take Gleek to the doctor. Then daddy left too and he was left with Chalain and Chaliren. This was followed by an overnight stay at his cousin’s house. At the time these things were happening he was happy to have the adventure. He told me he had fun and wasn’t sad at all. However, when we came to pick him up from his cousin’s house he did not run away and beg to stay. He came right to me and hugged me tight.

At home things reverted to normal. Patches played happily with his siblings all afternoon. He even went to bed without arguement. But alone in his bed in the dark the new found insecurities preyed upon him and he began to cry. Like me, his cork came loose. Fortunately I was just done venting when he began. I scooped him out of bed and asked him what was wrong. He couldn’t tell me. He didn’t have words for what he was feeling, but he clung tight to me. At Howard’s sugguestion I tucked Patches into bed with me. This made him happy. He lay next to me in the bed and chattered about his day while he played with a glow in the dark star. I have to confess that I kept drifting off to sleep. I was so exhausted.

After awhile it wasn’t enough for Patches to just be in bed with mommy, he needed me to hold him too. So I tucked him into the snuggle spot and he lay there snuggly-safe and continued to play and talk. Patches only snuggles when he needs comforting. When he is playing he wants his own space. I talked to him a little to see if I could help him work through what he was feeling. Unfortunately he’s not really old enough to analyse his thoughts and feelings. I could only watch his reactions to my conversational sallies to find out where the sad spots were. As I suspected, he loved having Chalain and Chaliren over, he loved having a slumber party with his cousin, most of what happened was new and interesting for him. But when I said “was mommy gone?” his face crumpled a little and a pout began to emerge, then he grabbed his blanket hugged it and changed the subject. I didn’t persue the topic. I wanted this to be a snuggly-reassurance time not a delving difficult emotions time. Patches continued to talk and play for awhile and I began drifting off to sleep again. Finally he began to feel sleepy and he scooted out of the snuggle and over onto his daddy’s pillow to fall asleep.

I don’t know if I’ll continue to see delayed reactions from Patches. Probably, because he now lives in a world where it is possible for mommy to disapear without warning. I’ll have to be extra careful and nice to both Patches and Gleek today. Hopefully if there are other repressed emotions or delayed reactions I’ll recognize them for what they are.

It’s been a rough couple of days. Now I am home. I’ve upacked all the stuff that was packed for Howard and I to use at the hospital. I’ve unpacked all the stuff that the kids hauled over to their aunt’s house for the suprise sleep over. I’ve made Gleek bathe so that she doesn’t smell like sick or hospital anymore. I’ve made kids pick up the floors of their rooms so I can walk without tripping. I’ve even begun running laundry through the washer. Life is starting to feel normal again.

I finally have time to be incredibly grateful. I am grateful for modern medical science without which Gleek would probably have died this week. I am grateful for all the wonderful medical personell who were so kind and helpful. I am grateful for friends and family who dropped everything to watch our other three kids. I am grateful that this wasn’t any worse. I am grateful that while the medical bills will be painful to pay, we CAN pay them. I am grateful for Howard, because I was able to focus on taking care of Gleek and know that he would arrange for everything else to be taken care of. I am grateful that I still have my Gleek and that she is feeling better.

Yesterday morning I took Gleek to a local instacare center. She’d been running a high fever for two days and during that time had done nothing buy lie still on the couch. I left the house at 8:30 am. By 10 am we’d seen a PA, ruled out ear infection and strep, drawn blood for testing, and peed in a cup for urinalisys. Based on the results the PA sent us to a hospital for an ultrasound and a CT scan to check for apendicitis. By noon we’d been handed a diagnosis of appendicitis based on the CT scan. We moved Gleek to another hospital where there was a surgeon who was good with kids. By about 2 pm the surgeon had examined Gleek, discussed the CT with a radiologist, and declared that he didn’t believe it was apendicitis. By 4 pm Gleek had been examined by a pediatrician who agreed that it wasn’t apendicitis and believed we were dealing with a kidney/bladder infection. He decreed that we get another urine sample for testing and then start IV antibiotics. Gleek was dehydrated and didn’t pee until 7 pm, it was almost 8 by the time the antibiotics were started. By midnight Gleek’s fever was gone. By morning she felt well enough to sit up in bed. We were out of the hospital by noon.

I stayed at the hospital with Gleek all night. They had a roll away bed for me. The sleep was pretty interrupted because Gleek needed to potty twice and the IV drip beeped several times and the nurses had to come in and take vitals a couple of times. At first I was so exhausted that I just fell back asleep after every interruption. But around 3 am I lay awake for an hour playing What Could I Have Done Differently, and Did Anyone Make A Mistake, and Could This Have Been Avoided. Bladder infections are fairly simple to treat once they’re diagnosed. I’ve had several and all they involved was a trip to the doctor and a trip to the pharmacy. Unfortunately Kidney infections are a bit harder to deal with. I landed in an ER with one of those once. So could I have diagnosed this earlier and avoided ultrasound, CT scan, and hospitalization? After about an hour of circling this question I think the answer is no. Howard and I made the very best choices we could make based on the information we had at the time. All of the doctors did the same. But the next time Gleek lands on the couch with a 103 degree fever, I’ll much quicker about hauling her to the doctor’s office.

Another thing I mused on while listening to the hum of medical machinery at 3 am, was my belief in a cosmic parenting scoreboard. I realized that one of the reasons I was obsessing about the questions in the previoud paragraph, was because I felt like if I’d contributed to a misdiagnosis I would have failed somehow. I wondered if things I’d said led that very first PA to consider appendicitis when she might not have otherwise. If I hadn’t led her astray would we then have been sent home with an antibiotic and Gleek on the road to recovery 12 hours sooner? Did Gleek really need the hospitalization or was that just a side effect of the apendicitis misdiagnosis? In retrospect, she was pretty dehydrated. Her fever was running over 103, but her hands and feet were cold, even bluish. She wouldn’t eat or drink more than a sip in an hour. Her body was beginning to shut down. Within 30 minutes of starting the IV drip she looked worlds better. But she wasn’t that bad on Friday night. Do I lose SuperParent points for not recognizing that she needed a doctor on Friday? Do I gain SuperParent points for recognizing that she needed one Saturday morning? Why do I care about SuperParent points anyway? No one else is keeping score, just me. There is no cosmic scoreboard, so why am I spending so much mental energy second guessing the events of the last 48 hours?

I’m not looking forward to sorting out all the medical bills. Why is it that every single person who even walked by Gleeks hospital room will bill separately? I’ll bet we even get a bill from the surgeon who didn’t operate.

Howard pondering aloud the evening’s proposed entertainment:

“I think I’d like to crash a few cars before we Throw Momma from the Train.”

Monday is my day for accounting. I pay bills, reconcile statements, enter reciepts, and all sorts of other number matching and account keeping activities. I do this for both the business and the family budget. I graduated with a BA in humanities. Math was my least favorite subject all the way through school and I haven’t had any formal mathematical education since halfway through my senior year of high school. If someone had told my 17 year old self that I would enjoy accounting, I would have laughed.

I probably wouldn’t enjoy being a professional accountant, but I do enjoy doing the family and business accounts. I love making all the numbers match and categorizing all the expenses. I love walking into the CPA’s office with the right tax reports and reciepts. Budgeting is satisfying because there are categories for all the spending and all I have to do is make sure that we don’t over spend in any of the categories. Or if we do I make sure that we shift money from other categories to make up for the overage. I love the fact that it all stays exactly where I put it from one week to the next. It isn’t like dishes or housework that gets undone the moment my back is turned.

Not everyone feels this way about accounting. They face paying bills and managing budget with a dread that borders on fear. I can understand that because when I first began learning how to manage accounts I felt some of that dread. I was always afraid that I was doing things wrong and that the sinister IRS would swoop down upon me and tell me that I had accrued a bill so large that they were going to auction off the house to pay for it. I can’t say when I stopped fearing the IRS. It was probably sometime after the second or third time that a CPA commented positively on the organization of my accounts and reports. At some point I realized that I was good at small business and family accounting. It is nice to have something I can point to and say “I’m good at that.” It is also nice to realize that I have a set of skills that would quickly land me a job in a workplace if I chose to seek one.

With the upcoming release of Schlock book 1, the business accounting is about to get more complex. I’m relishing the coming challenge. I’m not relishing the wait until the challenge arrives. I feel like Inigo at the top of the cliff while the man in black climbs from below.
“I hate waiting.”