Tuesday, June 01, 2010

Hippos, Rhinos and this title has little to do with the content of the post

I bumped in to our Speech/Developmental Therapist at the park near our house when I was out chatting with other mothers while the kids frolicked and played. After everyone else was out of earshot, our therapist said, "I will never tell anyone where we know each other from unless you say so first." And I was all like, "What?! Why?!? There's not supposed to be any stigma." I'm just going to assume it's like HIPAA, and she took some oath.

Which reminds me...in the last week or so, several people have said some variation of "When you have a child with special needs...not that Bobo has special needs or anything..." WTF? Really? Oh, OK then. Don't all children have their own special needs? Aren't all children special? Aren't all children different from every other chld? If it means Bobo gets extra special attention, I will take any label anyone has to throw at him (much like I'll take labels for Chuckles if it means he gets special attention at school).


Follow-up: Do you remember when I said they took totally gross cultures from Bobo's ears? Did I ever tell you what the result was? No, I did not. So, ear cultures. He has a lot of drainage. Not all the time but probably half of the time (you know, like when he has an active infection). The standard treatment for ear drainage in kids with tubes is antibiotic ear drops or steroid ear drops w/ antibiotics. Bobo got his ear tubes 3/3/10. By May 19th, he had been on ear drops 4 times. He had a lot of drainage that day, but we hadn't been using the drops. I wanted to see whether he would fight it off on his own. So, cultures were taken and drops were started after we left. The cultures came back positive for something rather odd. Something that would not be helped by antibiotic drops: yeast. Bobo had a yeast infection in his ear. He had not been on antibiotics immediately prior to that. But his ears are warm, moist, and dark. It ended up clearing up on its own, but ewwww. I'm thinking of renting him out to artisinal bread makers. Once the cultures were back we discontinued the antibiotic drops and every thing sort of worked itself out. (Typical treatment for yeast in the ear is white vinegar drops but our ped wasn't sure whether that was OK with ear tubes. A call to the ENT and it is OK, but we did not end up doing it.) Chalk another one up to opportunistic infection. Oh, and he developed thrush again, but it resolved on its own (and thank goodness because the Nystatin made Bobo vomit which was un-fun.)


By the way, to the poster who recommended Dr. Raoul Wolf... three more people have recommended him to me. We might end up seeing him depending on what these blood draws show. However, Children's Memorial Hospital has a pediatric immunologist with office hours in Northwest Indiana one day per week, so that would be convenient. I'm not sure what we'll do about that when the time comes, and I don't have the head space to worry about it before we know anything, so I am inclined to ignore it for now. Head meet sand. Although, I will say that I know the back way to U of C and it's only a half hour away so we're not talking about driving to Milwaukee or anything. I will probably end up calling two or three and seeing who has the earliest appointment availability if it comes to that.


We need a palate cleansing laugh. I want to share one of the applications I got to my job on SitterCity. I will change key details (and name) to protect the "innocent". I hope this makes you laugh as much as it made me cringe. The email is paraphrased in blue with my comments in black:

Dear C (I just used my first initial in the posting so this seemed perfectly acceptable and normal to me): My name is Uhlitia (pronounced like Alicia) (alrighty then, I will call you NotAlicia). I'm 22 years old and have a lot of childcare experience. My dad left my mom when I was 12 to have an affair with another woman. It was really hard on all of us (OK, I fell I should tell you that childcare experience is good, but you could leave some of the details out about how you got that experience...says the woman who tells the entire internet about her nether regions). My mom had to work all the time so I pretty much raised my younger brother and sister . Children are my passion, and I really enjoy them. Your ad asked for a non-smoker, but I want to be honest with you (which is a good, good thing, but you might want to quit smoking because it is bad for you, and I care about you, NotAlicia.). I am a smoker, but never in the house and never around the children (well, that is considerate but the pediatrician has said no to first-hand smoke, obviously, second hand smoke, and third hand smoke for Bobo). I always make sure the kids are asleep or my friends are watching them before I go outside to smoke (OMG, were you planning on letting your friends in to my house when I wasn't home and leaving my kids with them while you went out to smoke or went to the store to buy a pack of cigs?). I hope you will consider me for the position. Uhlitia

I appreciate the honesty. It makes it easier to dismiss your application. I will now contrast this with another nanny application we received so you can see how different they are.

Replying to the Nanny Position. I Love caring for and teaching children, am CPR and First Aid Certified. Own Transportation.I live close by as I also live in [redacted]. I am nurturing, dependable and have excellent references. I work in the church nursery along with my husband. We are foster parents and host foreign exchange students during the school year. (We also train butterflies to do our yardwork and have a fleet of speech therapists on speed dial...all of whom owe us a favor.) Experience Includes:Worked in a NICU caring for Premature Babies, and Nanny for 14 years for a wonderful family. Looking forward to hearing from you. Thank You. Mary Poppins at (219) 555-1234

What Mary Poppins left out is that I would need to sell approximately one kidney and 15 of my eggs every year to afford her. Perhaps in this down economy she would take less, but her profile tells me she is looking for about $20/hour. That works out to one Acura TL plus one Nissan Versa every year (or one fully loaded Buick Enclave if you prefer an American auto counterpart).

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