in which we are stricken with the plague and carry on

Inside info: I almost always write my blog title last. I ramble through 300 words or so and then after I have figured out what it was that I ended up saying, I brainstorm for a title that will make people interested in reading it. Sometimes Toby offers impractical suggestions for titles, because his kind of nerdy jokes are impractical, unless you, too, are a nerdy joker. Demographics suggest that many of you are, so maybe I should be taking more input from the Tobester. But I digress.

This time I wrote the title first and was reminded of the initially interesting and historical "Keep Calm and Carry On" posters, which have become a scourge on the face of humanity and have made Pinterest even more of a source of rage for me. If you ever think about repinning "Keep Calm and Read Twilight", then I don't know if I have anything else to say to you. I just... our relationship is threatened, I'll say that.

Anyway, back to this blog post. The other night, we went to see the neurologist about R2 and it was awful, really bad. It wasn't new information, per se, but it felt like final information in a lot of ways, and knowing that brought up more questions than answers about all kinds of difficult and completely hypothetical things. Plus, the MOG and I process completely differently, so I had my emotional collapse in the car and built a guest bedroom for a nurse/relative in my head and tried to plan end-of-life-stuff and he was in a totally different place, feeling hopeful that we may be able to ease some symptoms after we get all the dietary and med testing, having already processed the longterm weeks ago. It's so complicated, being married to the opposite gender and trying to grieve preemptively, separately and together-ly. It is complicated. We love each other, we're in this together, but our different-ness has never been more obvious.

So we got home and Toby was laying on the couch, flushed with fever. The other little kids quickly followed suit, Brynn waking up at 3 am hallucinating about her bed dropping down and, later, while she sat on the potty, screaming, "The potty is wobbling, it's wobbling, OH DEAR!", which, come on, is the cutest thing you ever heard. It was almost a relief, if you can believe it, to be dealing with normal kids being sick in a normal way, responding appropriately to fever-reducers, vocalizing loudly about their needs. One of the hard things about R2's illness is that he is completely unable to tell us what hurts, what he wants, etc. It's nightmarish, thinking about how he must feel, unable to even communicate that he is thirsty. He has a few signs and his ipad but currently, we are only able to operate on process of elimination, and that is hard.

This morning, Tristan had a febrile seizure, which was scary because none of my "typical" kids have ever had a seizure, but even with the fear, I was so aware of exactly what was going on and that the most likely outcome was a totally normal Trissy in a short amount of time. So we went to the pediatrician and multiple nurses came in to hold Brynn down for a throat swab, which is sad but also, super impressive, dynamite in small packages and whatnot. Sure enough, they have the flu. So we're trying to keep them quarantined in the sunroom, bribing them with unlimited TV and comfy blankets, and trying to keep them away from R2.

After a bit, when things keep getting bad and then they get bad-der, it starts to get just slightly funny. Or possibly, I am going nuts. Whatever the case, we are carrying on.