Brace Yourselves

A few of my nearest and dearest have asked for a New Years blog from me...ME, the great procrastinator. Is it still officially "New Years" up until the last week of January? Well then, here you go.

Resolution number one, no more procrastinating. Just kidding, that was last year's and I haven't gotten around to it yet.

No, my real resolution (or at least one of them) is to do as Emily Dickinson says, to "tell all the truth, but tell it slant."

Read the whole poem and see for yourself what you think she means, but for me, it's a reminder urging me on to keep telling you all the absolute truth, but with just enough of my "slanted" sense of humor intact that we all laugh to keep from crying...or running screaming through the streets with handfuls of our own hair in our fists with a little scalp still clinging to the clumps, whatever...

Because whatever else you think of the story I'm about to tell you, you have to know that all of it is absolutely true because, as has been said elsewhere, more eloquently, you just can't make this shit up.

By now you probably know my philosophy, which basically states that with a little perspective, much of life's aggravation, of ever varying degrees, has the potential to end up funny as hell-- even the most gut-wrenching experiences (oh, just you wait). Kids keep you up all night? What's funnier than their strung-out mother, hair-on-end, pratfalling down the stairs over a few poorly placed playthings the morning after? Oh I was fine, and when I reviewed the play with my mind's eye it was hilarious, especially since I survived without the slightest sign of quadriplegia. Bank talks about wanting your house? Ha ha, joke's on them, wait'll they see the shape it's in, they'd rather repossess a smoking crater. Coffeemaker won't turn on? Ok, some things aren't funny, I shouldn't have even put that last one out there, cancel that coffeepot one please Universe, delete, delete...

At any rate, you get it, you have to have the right (i.e. sick) sense of humor. Because if you do, and you can squeeze even one small drop of comedy out, the experience must have been worth it...if not to you yourself, at least to the people you tell the story to and set them rolling on the floor. It might take a few weeks, which explains why there can be a pretty long space between my blog posts (and to the fans who've been complaining about the lapse, thanks for that kind compliment), but sooner or later, against all odds, you chuckle.

So here we are again. There's no way to set you up for this, so I'm just going to say it. We're going to talk about enemas. Oh come on, you've been here before, you know I'm not for the faint of heart. If you can't take it, you'd better go faint somewhere else...somewhere a little less real. And dig your heels in people, because you've seen how I roll, the discussion will not be...um...fleeting. (You get the pun, do you? Familiar with the brand, are you?)

First, the unfunny part, which we have to get through, like it or not, isn't that always the way? A few weeks ago we had a very hurtin little boy on our hands...again. I know I've mentioned before that one of the more miserable aspects of autism these days is that many of our kids on the spectrum have bowels that don't want to move. This is for for reasons no one has an adequate explanation for, especially in parts of the medical community that won't hear of the notion that any of our kids could possibly have been overly sensitive to and thereby damaged by an overly aggressive, greed-infected vaccine protocol. But long story short, at least for my Cal, there seems to be a motility issue at the heart of the matter when it comes to his GI tract. The movement of his whole system just isn't up to speed. His overall musculature is what the occupational therapists call "hypotonic" or "low tone," and that applies to the muscles that make up the digestive tract as well.

We try to be proactive about this, stay on top of it with diet, give him doctor-recommended stuff to take by mouth to help keep him going...but sometimes nothing seems to help, and in this particular case I have to admit (bad mother!) I lost track of how long it had been. So this one particular night came along where my poor baby was waddling around with a belly distended out to here, a decidedly NOT laughing Buddha, and I realized, to my horror, that the last time we'd had to clean up a BM was at my mother's for Christmas. It was now ten days later. This kid was backed up to his tonsils. Before we knew it, he was screaming bloody murder, belching with reflux, writhing around in pain, and could barely catch his breath.

Calvin's expressive language development is still in the works, but we get the most out of him when he's the most motivated to tell us something. Well, my boy wanted to tell us what he needed from us more than words can say, and there was language spewing out of him, fully-articulated sentences pleading for help, but so choked with pain and tears and gasping and throwing himself around in agony that I couldn't understand the words. Of course at that point I didn't need to.

We were about to get everybody into the car for a 9 p.m. trip to the ER when it occurred to either Mike or me to call our pediatrician first. This is a guy who picks up his cell phone after hours, a fact that we weren't altogether used to since he's been our kids' doctor for less than a year at this point. Glad we remembered, saved us a trip to the emergency room with a screaming kid, always a plus (and had we just merrily rolled along to the hospital, you'd probably never be hearing the story you're in the middle of, and that would be just sad). I told the doc the situation and that we were at a loss for what to do. He told us, in plain language, that with a kid THAT backed up, nothing "from above" was going to help at this point (i.e. nothing by mouth), but that we were going to have to clear him out "from below."

From below. Uh oh.

Well, we'd been down this road before, sort of--we'd had to make a trip to the ER several months earlier with the same issue and they'd sent us home with a pediatric Fleet enema. Nature had taken its course that time, the problem was a little less far gone, and we hadn't had to use it. Looks like our luck had run out, but at least no one had to race to the drugstore before closing time, or drive all the way to an all-night superstore to get our son some relief.

This might be old hat to some of you parents out there, but we'd managed to get our kids to age 5 and almost 4 before having to use this particular intervention. And we had no idea what we were doing. My dear mother is a registered nurse and never shied away from her good friend the enema (it's ok, I've had plenty of therapy since), and neither did her mother before her, but it hasn't been my bailiwick. I also had my mom's voice in my head warning that you "have to be careful not to perforate the rectum," and that only added to my terror. What if I perforate his rectum what if I perforate his rectum...drumming like the soundtrack of a horror movie in my inner ears.

(Short digression, I promise. My mother's voice is nothing like Dan Aykroyd's impersonation of Julia Child in that legendary Saturday Night Live skit where she tells us to "save the liver," but somehow that's what the perforated rectum warning sounds like in my head...don't know why that happens, sorry Mommy...)

Great, so now we knew what to do, the question was how to do it. (I've since discussed this incident with a friend who's also a mother and a physician, and her response was a matter-of-fact, "You just DO it." I don't know, that just sounds like an impenetrable Zen koan to me.) Well, Calvin tends to relax in the bathtub, and he was so riled up and hysterical that Mike and I couldn't hear ourselves or each other over the screaming, so we figured maybe that would be the place to start.

We get the tub filled, and we get the boy into the tub, and the boy then starts pulling at me like he wants me in the tub with him. I think, ok, maybe that'll help, I'll have a better angle or traction or whatever, so I start getting into the tub. Dear husband reminds me that I still have all my clothes on (it's really hard to think with all the screaming), so I do my best to remedy that while my suddenly very strong preschooler is yanking me headfirst into the water. Somehow, by the time I nearly face plant into the bathtub, I'm sufficiently undressed to be in a bathtub where I'm planning on administering an enema to my wriggling, screaming, highly uncomfortable three-year-old, or at least getting him into position so Mike can do it. (Interestingly enough, this is not the only story about me where nudity makes it funnier, and not for any of the reasons you'd think--that's another story for another blog, but it must be some universal truth...things are funnier when naked...not to mention slippery when wet.)

Ok, fine, so now I'm in. But then suddenly Calvin, with his newfound superpowers (low-tone musculature my naked ass) starts yanking his father into the tub with us too. This is getting a little ridiculous, no? This tub is barely made for one, and besides, Mike's got all his clothes on, so he does his best to remedy that, and I get my dripping-wet self OUT of the tub thinking, ok, Mike will hang on to the boy and I'll do the thing from outside the tub and it'll all work out in the end.

Let's pause here for a minute, because now that everybody in the bathroom taking part in this charming tableaux is naked I need to make the following announcement. From here on in, for the duration of this scene, the roles of Mike and Tracy will be played by Hugh Jackman and Beyonce Knowles. (Yeah that's right, he liked it so he put a ring on it. ) Calvin, however, will be played by himself because, constipated or not, let's face it, he's perfect.

Ok, back to the tub, who's in there again? Yes, Mike and Cal are in the tub, Cal is still upset but calming down, Mike distracts him, I descend like a falcon and do what needs to be done, Cal is too surprised to even protest too much...and I suddenly realize, wow, we did it! The triumphant part of the soundtrack swells, naked Hugh and Beyonce look at each other in relieved, breathless victory, tousled locks of hair playing gorgeously upon their gently sweating brows, and all that's left to do is wait...

It was less than a two-minute wait. And I'd really like to say that Beyonce whisked Cal out of the tub and onto the toilet in time when she saw the look on his face that said the eagle was about to land...but I'd be lying. And I'd like to say Hugh made it out of the tub in time to avoid being contaminated by a clump of doodoo the size of a beagle, but then I'd be lying again. And I'd also like to say that when my husband (still naked) was on his hands and knees on the bathroom floor trying to clean up the little landmines that were being left all over the place once we did get the boy out of the contaminated tub, that I was able to keep Cal from sidling up behind him and peeing on the soles of his father's feet...but that, dear friends, would also be a lie. (Mike says he's sure I was helping Cal aim, but who would do such a thing?).

I'd like to say I was making up even one tiny iota of any of this, instead of having lived it in its entirety, in this body, Beyonce's, or any other. But who would I be kidding?

All I can add is, hats off to Hugh and Beyonce for a display of seamlessly orchestrated teamwork the likes or probabilities of which were never even minutely hinted at in their wedding vows. Not even the tiniest warning. Frickin MacGyver, Batman, and James Bond combined couldn't have pulled this one off.

And the happy ending? That boy was clean as a whistle, inside and out. Slept like a rock, too, which hardly ever happens. Gracie too, remember Gracie? Never even budged during this whole hullaballoo, slept through it all, blissfully unaware (thank God, or she'd have splashed right in there with us, Mother of God, let's don't even think of it...). This quiet time, kiddies asleep, on a long winter's night gave Hugh and Beyonce some well-earned time together to...finish decontaminating the master bath. Hey, these things need to be done, even when you look like we do, at least when well-cast.

Seriously, have you ever? If you have, please let me know. Tell all the truth, but tell it slant.