I can’t recall much of this week other than the many trips to and fro the doctors’ offices. Tuesday was the day when I learned that Wednesday morning would be spent in the hospital while we waited to see if Cass had any cysts that would account for the ongoing issue of blood in her urine. After establishing that her bladder walls are slick, shiny and free of any unwanted intruders, I spent the next two hours helping Cass come out of her drugged haze so that we could return home. And while she is cyst-free, she must now pee into a jug over a 24-hour period so that the juice can then be sent off to a lab in an attempt to figure out just why there is so much damn protein present in her urine.
Thursday found us racing off to the doctor’s office in the late afternoon after Devon awoke from his nap screaming his head off for over an hour -for the second day in a row. I was willing to write it off to sloppy mothering, why would he want to wake up yet again to the UnMother-of-the-Year- but when I peeked in his giant mouth and found his chubby cheeks covered in white sores I decided to call the nurse and see if we could work out a deal to get him in at 4:30 in the afternoon. So we raced in. My doctor, who knows me far too well, took his own look and said, “Ah, Hand-Foot-and-Mouth disease. It’s going around.” So a pat on the shoulder, keep your head up, tuck the little guy in with a dose of Advil and off we went.
Today it was into the Children’s Hospital teaveling clinic for Devon’s annual check up. I had requested an indepth sonogram because I wanted a complete picture of his heart this year. I know that my father’s heart attack had nothing to do with Devon’s congential heart defect, but I still needed some reassurance. The sonographer was kind enough to also do an EKG just to soothe my nerves. Sure enough Devon passed them all with flying colors. He has wonky heart valves but they work like a dream and he is good to go. So good, in fact, that he doesn’t need another check up like this one for a whopping two years.
After the heart checks Devon needed to have four shots because I have gotten so behind on his vaccinations. So Devon sat on Matt’s lap and opened up his huge mouth in screams while the nurse poked four needles into his chubby, pink thighs. I then said my good-byes to Matt, tucked Devon in the Bug and took him home.
So really, when all is said and done it wasn’t a bad week. But here is the thing, doing it on my own is so fucking hard. Yes, Matt came to the hospital that morning when Cass was in surgery. Yes, he hung out in the post-op room and played thumb wars with her after she came out her whooziness. Yes, he was there today for Devon’s cardio check up. But Matt and I are just the producers of off spring at this point. We are no longer a team. There is no partnership. There were no hugs in the post-op waiting room. No comforting hand squeezes. No words of any kind. He asked me the other day if I felt anything about our split since I appeared to be so frosty about it. My outer dialogue was something along the lines of, “Well, yes. Of course I feel sadness about it. But right now I feel sadness about alot of things in my life. I miss my father.”
But my inner dialogue, the far bitchier of the two, screamed something like, “Well, yes-fucking-shit I feel something. What the fuck do you think? Do you think I teamed up with you after the divorce because I was having a random willy nilly sort of day? Do you think I jumped into the madness of having a third child -post-divorce- on a whim? No, fucker, I did it because I loved you. Because I believed in you, you fuckhead. And now, here I am with three kids. My father is dead. My home is gone, at least for the time being. I live with my mother. And you are gone. We are done. There is no team.” But that inner bitch is a silent hag and she kept quiet.
So again, when all is said and done, this week was not so bad. But it was lonely. Lonely in the an-Army-of-one sort of way. Maybe I should go get out the violin and play myself a song.