Year Three, Week 24 - Easily Frightened....

Last week, the day after we came back from Philly, Babygirl awoke with a bellyache.  No fever.  No nausea.  No urinary symptoms.  Not like cramps.  Low in the belly - right over the transplanted kidney.  No trauma, no recent heavy lifting or change in activity.  Just pain - bad pain.  Tylenol didn't really help, so I gave he the tramadol we keep for her worst headaches, and she stayed home from school and went to bed.

And I went to work. 

Every mom knows that day - the one where you wish with all you are that you could stay home and sit vigil over a child who is ill. 

But we are shorthanded - one of my partners is sporting a new knee, and won't be back for a few more weeks.  I have two students, and I'd just skipped a day to go to Philly.  My desk would be literally buried by work leftover from Wednesday and the missed day, and that work represents needs ranging from silly to desperate, needing focus and attention from someone who can tell the difference. 

Focus.  Sigh. 

I wanted to call every ten minutes.  I didn't.  I wanted to go home at lunchtime and see if she was okay.  I couldn't.  I wanted to get home early and see for myself that she wasn't dangerously ill.  I barely made if for dinner at 6:30.

At work I wanted to be kind.  I was short-tempered.  I wanted to be tough.  I was weepy.  I wanted to concentrate.  I felt SO scattered.  I can't believe I actually accomplished anything.  I can't remember anything but the desperate desire to get the damned charts off my damned desk and dump the damned task list into my damned computer's recycle bin. 

I'm pretty damned sure that witnesses will freely attest to the fact that my language was much, much worse than that.

She was fine, sort of.  Still in pain, no fever, no symptoms except the pain.

By Monday morning it was gone, and she was saying things like, "Maybe I fell out of bed or something..."  Ummm......okay? And, "What if I had had appendicitis like Dad?"  Uh, yeah, crossed my mind.

I've been doing better at not getting totally hysterical about every little thing.  But this scared the crap out of me.  I'm still not sleeping, and I'm still pretty cranky.

DeeDee