The Trifecta

Our most exciting moments occur in the night. Come to think of it, that seems to be a trend in my life. Each time I went in to labor it was “the middle of the night.” Never after a good night’s sleep and a hot breakfast. Also, any trouble I’ve ever been in (who, me?) has almost always been nocturnal trouble. There’s an expression from somewhere, “Nothing good ever happens after midnight.”

The last few nights have proven this expression, and last night especially. Now that Ashton has Clostridium difficile (*note: difícil means “difficult” en espanol), I can rarely get him to the bathroom with Beeper on time. Beeper is what he named his omnipresent IV pole and although he rolls, he has never won a race as he is connected to a small boy’s abdomen. We also have to unplug the heart monitor and yank off the blood pressure cuff before we even get rolling toward that eternal four foot stretch to the commode.

Time has lost most of it’s meaning, but I know it was “the middle of the night” when the Trifecta hit.

Ashton: Mommy, I need to go potty.

Mommy springs in to action.

Mommy is merely human.

I blinked and I was trapped by voluminous amounts of vomit, urine and poop (sorry, just trying to paint a picture, here).

I am not supposed to come in contact with any bodily fluids of his and that’s a difficult order when my  child is standing in a puddle of all this stuff and it’s creeping toward me, backing me in to the shower and the call button is 20 feet away. So, I handed Ashton a trough in which to continue barfing, stepped right in it, lunged for the call button and yelled, “help!”

The nurse arrived, wide-eyed, as she assessed the Trifecta and me, donning purple gloves and stripping our C-diff/Chemo clothing from our bodies, both Ashton and I holding the doorframe in order to avoid slipping in the goo.

Note: RN’s will never object if you clean up after yourself or your child.

A sponge bath, Chemo wipedown, dry bedclothes and a load of laundry later (yes, we do our own poopy laundry, which I find unsanitary in that the other families use the same machine) we were back in bed, like, what was THAT? And is it going to happen again in 20 minutes?

I am watching myself grow old in fast-forward.  Bottom line: we are out of underwear.