Thursday, September 5, 2013

I admit it, I'm tired

I've gotta be honest, i'm exhausted. This whole back to school thing is kicking my butt. It's not just the back to school, it's also the extra hour and a half of treatments that we now need to find time for in a day, and the swim lessons, and the dance lessons, and our upcoming fundrasier (which will be awesome). This is how yesterday went:
Alarm goes off at 6:45. I know that's not early for many people, but the Moore family rarely sees the 7am sun. We didn't get out of bed before 8am but a few times all summer. Now school starts at 7:45. So the alarm goes off and I go to wake my daughter for school. We are dressed and downstairs by 7. I simultaneously make her breakfast, make myself coffee, and pack her lunch. By 7:30, my husband is downstairs, as are the other 3 kids who all want food, drinks, and a different cartoon on TV. I spend about 30 minutes pacifying that bunch while #1 heads off to school with dad. By 8am, I start to get Drews medications ready, checking the calendar to make sure I'm not giving the Tuesday-Thursday-Saturday pill on a Monday, Wednesday or Friday. The liquid antibiotic that he's on for inflammation, not antibiotic properties, is only given on Monday-Wednesday-Friday, but while a small bottle yields a little more than 12ml, it's only good for 7 days after mixing, and at 3.6mls three times per week, I need to try to recall when this bottle was mixed as there seems to be enough left for another dose, but it might not be good anymore. I dispense all other meds and assemble nebs, mixing up our inhaled antibiotic that literally smells like cat urine. It goes in a different kind of neb cup, but when Drew sees it he  freaks because 1) a mediction that smells like cat urine is misted into a mask strapped to his face and he knows how awful it smells, and 2) he knows that when he sees that neb, he has to sit for twice as long as a regular treatment beause it takes nearly 30 min to nebulize that medication. So I mix the medicine, hide the neb, and tell him its time to start treatments. It's now close to 8:30. This is problematic for a couple of reasons. First, this treatment will last around an hour. He is supposed to get the inhaled antibiotic 3x a day, spaced every 8 hours. There aren't enough hours spent awake for him to accomplish this, so we settle on trying to evenly space them. The other problem is that swim lessons start at 10am, which means that between the time we finish at 9:30 and 9:45 when we need to leave, I need to get two 3yr olds into swim suits and shoes, find towels, buckle in three kids, grab something to entertain the baby, and back out of the driveway so that we arrive with enough time to use the restooms before getting into the pool. It may seem silly that we do swim lessons...or dance class...or tball, what with everything else we have going on, but staying active plays a big role in staying healthy with Cystic Fibrosis. And while there may be no scientific proof to this, since we started swimming, the severe sinus disease has all but disappeared. I wouldnt want to be the guy swimming next to my little man, cleansing those funked up sinuses, but if a little chlorine can do the trick and keep us from another sinus surgery, then we will be efficient with that 15 min window that we have to get our act together. Move it or lose it people.
Swim lessons are only 30min long, thank God, because we need to get home to eat an early lunch because, you guessed it, we have another treatment to squeeze in before we leave for school at 12:15. Three year olds move at warp speed in almost all areas of their life, except for changing out of a wet swimsuit. This is also when the independance that I pushed them so hard toward comes back to bite me - they do not need my help, they can do it themselves. I try to be patient and watch and wait but we're on a tight schedule and FOR THE LOVE OF GOD why is it taking you so long to put on underwear!?! Focus people!
We manage to eat a quick lunch and get in a treatment before its time to buckle everyone in, again. Drop off is at 12:30 and we are all ready for it. Now its just the baby and I, with a quick stop at the post office to make before heading home. I imagined the post office to be quick and easy with just 1 kid in tow. I have a wild imagination. If I could send a package via carrier pigeon from my back porch, I'd buy a damn pigeon.
We're home before 1 and we're both ready for a nap. He gets one, I get to do the dishes, the laundry, the prescription reordering, the insurance claim negotiting, the [brief] treadmill walking, the dinner making and then the baby waking because at 3pm we need to pick up #1 from kindergarten. Back into the car we go at 2:45 and head off to school. #1 is tired but happy to see us and have some mostly uninterrupted attention while we wait for 2 & 3 to get done preschool.
At approximately 3:30 pm the fighting commences - because it really does matter who gets to the car first, who gets buckeled first, who had the best day, who made the first song request, who asked to go the back way home, and who isn't being treated fairly, by me, on our 5 minute drive home.
After we get in the front door and clothes are changed and drinks are distributed, there is a consensus to go outside to play. It's really not fun at all, by anyones standards. Exhaustion, in my house, shines through in the form of fighting, whining and crying. We remain outside until dad drives up, home early so that I don't pull out all of my hair. I warm up the dinner that I made earlier in the day, everyone complains that they don't like it, and I decide I'm not making anything else. Aftter all, if they starve to death there will be fewer mouths to feed!
At 6:30, its time to start the third and final treatment of the day. The kid are filthy, so we divide and conquer, one of us mixing and organizing medicines and devices, the other dealing with tired, dirty kids. The whole evening comes to a close shortly before 8pm when teeth have been brushed and stories have been read and four little people who I love more than anything in the world are ready for sleep.
We spend the next hour cleaning up our house. If someone had come to rob us, they would swear our house had already been hit. Baskets of clothes emptied to be used as cages, food and drinks scattered about, "artwork" taped to any and all open wall space. By 9pm, life seems to be in order. I want a drink, and I'd have one but being anything less than 100% the next day leaves me at an even greater disadantage than I'm already at. And lets be honest, I need more than just A drink. For an hour or so, I feed my Twitter addiction in between ordering school photos, registering for the PTO, sending out sad emails begging our families to purchase something from the magazine drive so that #1 can dress down one day next week, and checking the calendar to figure out how tomorrow needs to run.
I finally get to bed a little after 11pm, but, SURPRISE! The day isn't over yet! At 3am we are awoken by a screaming, bloody 5yr old who fell out of bed and split her forehead open. If we had a suture kit in the house, I would have considered sewing her up myself because 1) who wants to run to the ER at 3am and 2) we were literally just there two weeks ago getting staples in someone elses head for a trampoline injury and I'm not in the mood to hear the lecture on keeping my house safe for my kids. One of these days they'll call Child Protective Services and I'll contimplate the relief it would be if they took them away for just a few hours until they read my blog and realize that I'm just a mom trying to do the best that I can.

1 comment:

  1. I'm exhausted just reading this! We don't have as many treatments as you do yet but I hear you about trying to fit it all in. There are not enough hours in the day!

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