Monday Memory...a bit late

I read a lot of blogs via Google Reader (a great tool...you should really check it out if you enjoy reading blogs like I do - so many great ideas out there floating around). One that I really enjoy reading is called SmallWorld at Home. She has a neat little meme she has started called Monday Memory. Yes, I realize today is Tuesday & actually in my time zone, it's only 30 minutes away from being Wednesday. But I'm doing it anyway.

You see - two out of my three boys are sick. I'm pretty sure J has strep throat.  He has an appointment for the doctor tomorrow (they couldn't see him today). I medicated him up & sent him to bed without any problems. And then at 10:30 tonight N woke up crying that his ear hurt. He has been having issues with his ears for about the last week but they keep coming & going. I knew his hearing was affected at one point & planned to call the doctor yesterday for him, but he was better. He could hear & had no pain. In fact, he was fine all day today - until 10:30 tonight.

He's now laying on the couch watching his favorite show of all time - Extreme Trains. Not only is it about trains - his obsession since he was about three years old - but the host is from Maine & not only from Maine, but he grew up in the next town over & went to the same high school as hubby.

But that's not my memory.

As you see - I have some time to kill until said child falls asleep, but this certainly beats hanging out in the ER. I'm praying we get through the night. In the meantime, I'm blogging.

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I really can relate to how my boys are feeling. I was a very ill child. In fact, my very first memory ever was from when I was two years old. Yes, two years old. That floors me really. The memory wasn't fun which is probably why I remember it.

I had been very, very ill as an infant. As my mother told me once, they feared I would die. I'm not sure what I was sick with & I don't think I ever asked my mom, but it was either I would die or they could try a new antibiotic just out - tetracycline. What they didn't know then was that tetracycline shouldn't be given to children under the age of twelve. It affects their teeth.

My memory...standing in our living room crying because my two front teeth hurt so badly. They were "rotten." I eventually had them pulled (don't remember that, but I do remember having others pulled at a young age, but that's another memory).

That didn't stop my illnesses though. 

Yes, this is a photo of the actual hospital.

I remember being in the hospital at around age three or four with croup. I think I spent a few days at least - maybe a week at most. I remember my mom having me in the bathroom at home with the hot water running (must have been winter - we didn't have hot water in the summer then) to steam it up. I remember laying on the couch with the ironing board over me & a towel draped over it with a pan of hot water underneath creating more steam. Then I remember heading to the hospital. I remember a visit from a family friend & her son bringing me a stuff Clifford doll that I loved. 

Then I remember when they took my tonsils out. I was the first patient operated on in the new hospital.

Yes, this is what it looks like now.

I remember being so nervous that night alone at the hospital. I called the nurse often to use the bathroom. I'm pretty sure she knew what was really going on. I remember going in to surgery. They gave me a Scooby-Doo doll to hug. I remember going under the anesthesia. I remember waking up - crying (did that when I had my wisdom teeth out too).

But I also remember my mom holding me in a rocking chair & crying too. I was suppose to stay in the hospital for a few days. This was not day surgery back then. I'm pretty sure there wasn't anything called "day surgery" back in the late 1970's. My dad had made plans to be a patient at the same time I was there to have his carpal tunnel surgery taken care of. He was admitted the day of my surgery. And my mom was crying because the nurses had told her I had to go home that day because they needed the bed for someone else.

I obviously recovered well & my immune system has never been better. From that point on I was a very healthy child. I still remember my mom talking about how the doctor's didn't believe having my tonsils & adenoids removed would make a different, but it did.

So I can really relate to how my boys are feeling. I also have a much better perspective of what my parents went through as well. I was number four out of five children. I'm sure my mom and dad had their hands full. Then I came along and was really ill - a lot. I'm so thankful for all the good care they gave us - especially when all five of us had the chicken pox...I vaguely remember that too so that tells you how young I was at the time.