Ok world here’s a post. A doozy it’ll be. Wow. Today was bad. I was reading Claire a book in the doctor’s office about some little boy who had a terrible, horrible, really bad day, and compared to mine, his was a skip in the sun. Now I know people have worse days in their lives than today. No one died. No one got ran over. No car wrecks. But still pretty bad.

I’ll break the first rule of what a day is now by saying this, in part, began days ago or weeks ago, but I am getting ahead of myself here (or is it, behind myself?)… anyway, Donna’s had a cold-ear infection-sinus-thingy going on, and she got me sick. Yesterday I was terrible, and Claire and I took off from work early to go to the doctor’s. He said my sinus infection was still there and gave me Augmentin. Needless to say I was just on Cipro for a week, which did nothing for me. Nada. No deal. I thanked him, picked up my pills, popped one and went to bed.

By that evening Claire was hacking up a lung. Even few minutes she’d run into her bathroom to spit up in the toilet. I gave her her treatment before bed and her temp was 100. She’s been doing treatments since early June, and we’re all getting a little sick of it! I am going to buy stock in the doctor’s office!

I’d been to the doctor’s with her on and off since June, and the last time Nikki told us she’d have the girls call the allergist. After a week of not hearing back from the referral department, I began calling them. A week later someone from the office called me! Craaaazy. Yes, I was frustrated. Now it’s two weeks out and finally they got her an appointment for later this week.

So now come 745AM I want to call the pediatrician to get her in, but I know they’re not open that early. I figured I’d wait until 8AM. After 8AM I called and the message said they’d open at 9AM. I was like "who opens their offices at 9?!". I knew it was a mistake and remembering Nikki saying something about their VM message being wrong months ago. I kept calling and finally at 9:02AM it went through! They said that Nikki could see her at 9:40AM, so we rushed over there. Donna met us there because she feels like the kid’s been popping antibiotics like candy for 2 years. We were looking for something different. A diagnosis, rather than a treatment.

We got there and the doc came into the room. I figured since it’s been ongoing for so long, that they’d have her look at Claire. She told us some different info, but also a lot of the same.  They had her do a treatment to open her up, which I knew would work, but does the kid gotta take treatments everyday forever? Then they sent us off to the ENT. They called over there immediately and got us in!!!

We hit lunch and then the ENT who told us Claire needed her tubes put back in. See Claire had tubes when she was 1, and now they wanted to redo them. There’s so many different schools of thoughts on tubes, that you never know for sure and now he wants them back in. We have a concern about hearing loss since she’s had ear infections for more than half of her life, now! He wants us to do an ABR test which will conclusively tell if her hearing is ok, and if not, how bad is it?  We acquiesced to the test and left with an antibiotic (ask me anything! I am an antibiotic expert!).

On our way out, I snapped at my wife. So that left a bad taste in both of our mouths. I popped in a DVD (since Claire fell asleep in the car), and the damn speaker was making horrid noises. One speaker’s been messed up in the last few days, so I was just annoyed it was still doing it. I checked all the connections and even slipped the unit out of the tv cabinet to check the wires. Nothing. Nada. Still bad.

Began to consider dinner, but then remembered one of our stove burners doesn’t heat up anymore. We’re down to 2 1/2. Was thinking of doing laundry, but then I remembered our washing machine screams louder than a fire alarm when I try to put on the rinse cycle. Sounds like a ringtail cat in a room full of rocking chairs, and the thing won’t turn. Damn.

Finally gave up, plopped my butt down and did very little. Donna called later and wanted a second opinion. I figured she wasn’t talking about the washer, the tv, or the stove. Maybe it was on marrying me in the first place, but then I decided it was about Claire’s tubes.

My first inclination was NO WAY. NO HOW. Nikki rocks. We love her. The doc is great, too. The ENT is their friend. Nice guy! I wouldn’t want any of them to think we don’t value them. And if we wanted a second opinion, then we’d need to gather records. Damn.

Then I wondered. Worse case scenario, is whatever we (Donna and I) decide affects Claire FOREVER, and somewhere down the line our daughter (who worse case scenario wears hearing aids all her life) asks us why we didn’t get a second opinion on redoing tubes, and we gotta tell her, cause we liked the doc a lot? Well, that sure don’t fly with me.

So now I need another ENT appointment, I gotta take her to the allergist appt (which I was finally able to get), buy a new washer, figure out how to use my stove, and beat my head against my stereo.

In the mean time, I also gotta figure out who dropped the ball at MCC and didn’t order my books for my course, and finish building my courses that Shelley is also teaching, go to two meetings this week about my extra duties at work, and I need to figure out how to drop a duty, but don’t know which one, and lastly I need to learn to not write run-ons because I yell at my kids when they do.