 |
| (At least she didn't try downhill skiing.) |
When she was just a year old, Nick
woke up one morning with an itchy rash which quickly turned into painful
pustules. The year was 1991, when the vaccine against chicken pox was still
being studied in American labs. This was also the time when all responsible
moms sent their kids to whoever’s house had a chickenpox outbreak, so their
kids could get it and get it “over with”. I was glad Nick contracted it then,
before he started kindergarten in a few weeks.
And even though his sister was only a
year old, I was relieved when a week or so later, she broke out as well.
Four years later, a few days after she started kindergarten, I got the first
call from the school nurse. “Val hit her head on the playground. She says her
head hurts, but otherwise seems fine. I still recommend you take her to the
hospital after school to get checked out.”
Hours and an MRI later, the ER doctor confirmed she had a mild concussion and
gave me the usual instructions of what to watch for. She was a little sick to
her stomach that night, and the headache continued for a few days. It slowed
her down for a while, but that was okay. She needed to slow down.
The following fall, within a week of school starting, the school nurse called
again. Val was throwing up. I sighed into the phone; this was becoming a trend.
And it was.
In August 1997, my sister Pat took the kids and me camping in Michigan’s UP. We
had a great time, all of us tromping through the woods, making s’mores over the
campfire, and sleeping in the pop-up camper.
About a month later, Val came home from school more tired than usual. At
bedtime, she told me she was too achy to even get her pajamas on by herself. I
pulled her t-shirt off over her head, and what I saw on her chest and back told
me immediately what was wrong with her. A round welt the size of a small saucer
on one side of her chest and a larger one on her back.
If you don’t live in northern Wisconsin or some other thickly wooded area, you
might have been alarmed or at least confused. After working in the medical
field for ten years and seeing many patients with this same illness, I had
never seen it with quite such a remarkable presentation. But I still knew in a
second. She had Lyme’s Disease.
The next day, after Val had her blood
drawn, the lab tech told me that the test turned bright pink instantly, faster
than anyone else’s had, confirming what we already knew.
This time, I called the school nurse to let her know that Val might be out for
a few days until her symptoms abated and she felt better.
My poor little girl finally had a
reprieve of a few years until September 14, 2001.
It was a sunny Sunday afternoon. Nick
was mowing the lawn on the riding mower, and Val was riding her bike around the
yard. Hubby and I were doing something in the front yard when
Nick yelled out, “Val’s screaming.” He pointed to the side of the house. 
(Picture not taken that particular day, but all this padding would not have helped anyway.)
We ran to find her crumpled underneath her bike, howling in pain. We carefully
picked her up, and she grabbed her arm.
Just like that tell-tale Lyme’s rash, Hubby and I both knew right away what was
wrong. Forever after, he said her right forearm looked like the kid who broke
his arm in one of the Harry Potter movies. Floppy. Okay, that’s overly
dramatic, but the middle of her arm truly was bent back noticeably.
I grabbed the car keys from the house while her step-dad carried her to the car. We left
Nick alone, still mowing the lawn and probably unaware.
The doctor once again confirmed what I already knew and what the X-ray showed. She
had broken and displaced both the ulna and radius bones in her forearm.
We were sent to the hospital in the next town over, one that had an orthopedic
surgeon on call. He gave her some sedation, set her arm, and wrapped it in a
cast from her fingertips to halfway up her shoulder.
For six weeks, with her right arm in a sling, she learned to write, eat, and
brush her teeth with her left arm. It would be one skill that served her well
over the years. When she got contact lenses a few years later, she learned to
put them in each eye at the same time, using her left hand for the left eye and
her right hand for the right.
It seemed that finally the curse was broken, at least for a while.
No comments:
Post a Comment