Shelby Cass's Weblog

Ever seen House, MD? Move over, Doctor…I too can pop Vicodin like candy. I can be sarcastic and pithy. I can pretend I don’t care about anyone but myself… But I don’t (too often). phew! I did, however, spend many many hours searching for anything on the web with the words “infant” and “lethargy”, in lieu of sleeping (which any self-respecting insomniac will tell you is overrated). Look at all you can accomplish! (And how much sense it makes when you go back to read it.) Actually, I believe Dr. House abhors us commonfolk sniffing around for our own diagnoses, but he wasn’t around to deliver terse messages of diseases of unkown origin, so I did what I could. 

First thing this morning I told Courtland that Michael has infant botulism. He “uh-huh”‘ed me and tuned me out as I spouted all my newfound web knowledge. Mere mortal. Actually, all I was really doing was hoping out loud that that’s all it was. That’s all? As Dad said during one of our phone conversations today, “Who would have thought we’d ever be rooting for botulism?” It’s true. 
 

Dad called me this afternoon while I was at lunch at CP to let me know that he heard Mikey laugh. laugh! Sweet music to everyone’s ears I am sure. Even the idea of it was sweet music to mine. So Court and I brought food (c/o Sandra) from the restaurant over and saw for ourselves how much better Mikey is doing today. He’s weak, and will be for a very long time, but if in 2 days, when the test results come back, they are positive for botulism, then there is an official diagnosis and a course of action. 

Funny, I have always been such a big fan of inaction, especially when it comes to midday naps and watching entire seasons of Smallville or Buffy in one sitting (not, of course, speaking from experience at all), but these past few days have filled my inactive body and brain with the restlessness of 20 ferretts on crack. Again, not speaking from experience. 
 

This is not to say that botulism is the diagnosis, because the tests are still pending, but the Neurologist who came in today said she is pretty sure it is botulism and although she is “not perfect”, she has a very good “Batting average and so almost perfect.” I don’t mind almost perfection. I don’t even mind horribly flawed. I just want Erin and Mike to see some light at the end of this very claustrophobic tunnel. I asked her about the chances of re-infection and confessed to my late night surfing, to which she replied, “Doctors Google, Too.” and told us the chance of recurrence is low. That gave everyone a little chuckle. Human doctors are great.  

TLC, Nancy, and Jauntie An read the words on this page and acted upon them. Little baby Mikey, my sister, and my family are all cared about greatly. It certainly is nice to know that. It is also nice to see my family rally together when it’s important. Could make a girl get all warm and fuzzy inside…not that I know that girl, and not that anyone should tell my family about her. 

12:33 am now. Off to Gonzo-land, and then to my favorite place in the world in the afternoon — The Urologist. I know, you wish you were me. Well, too bad. These are my stoned kidneys. You can’t have ‘em! 
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Today I went to the Children’s Hospital in Oakland where Baby Mikey is and has been since last night. Tubes in head, baby electrodes on torso, ET glowing heart monitor on toe, and Mikey, still and quiet under the wires. They still have no idea what is wrong with him. Erin and Mike keep using the word lethargic. I told Erin that was an SAT word and she said the only thing she remembered from the SAT was forerunner = harbinger. I remember trying not to fall asleep during the SATs (all three times) and not succeeding.
 
I wouldn’t use the word lethargic on Baby Mikey. I would use the word inert. Sick babies are so hard to see. Erin won’t let him out of her arms, which I completely understand, but she is so tired. So is Mike. They are tired of blood draws and waiting 8 hours for results. They are tired of CT scans, Ultrasounds, and Spinal taps and waiting a day for the results. They are tired of already waiting for the Neurologist now for 24 hours. They are tired of not knowing, and tired of being tired, and all Erin wants to know is “Why is my baby sick?” and that’s the answer she’s not getting. I wish I could give it to her. And I wish it could be good news in the form of a very simple answer and a speedy recovery.
 
Mom was there from about noon on. Dad showed up in the evening after his usual hectic day of work. He brought fresh fruit. Mom needs a hearing aid, and I get so irritated, it makes me feel bad, but I say something and she says “WHAT?!?” as if I have said something catastrophic, and it was a benign comment so I really don’t feel like raising my voice and repeating it. Poor Mom. She didn’t start to lose her hearing on purpose, but she is in denial about the severity, and I am in my angry phase. I wonder if that’s the phase that comes right before acceptance or buying and shoving the damn hearing aids in her ears myself. Thin line, really. Hard to say.
 
Hard to do much right now under these circumstances except get annoyed easily by other outside factors I also cannot control.
 
“Good night Wesley, sleep well. Most likely kill you in the morning.”  
-The Princess Bride 
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That’s who sang that song. Okay, on with the Gonzo mask. 
ni-night. 
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I forget who sang that song. “Pain makes you beautiful. I am no good for you, but then you’re no good for yourself. I give you pain, pain makes you beautiful…” Tortured artists and their tortured significant others, go team.
 
Baby Mikey is in the hospital and I have only heard second hand from my very reliable source (daddy/grampa) that he is/was to be transferred via whirly lighted ambulance to Oakland Children’s Hospital so he can get good pediatric care, him being of the pediatric persuasion. Be good, Baby Mikey. Get better. Have to. Have to. I’m very worried, but I know there’s nothing I can do, so tomorrow (rather, today, after I’ve been to bed and back up though no guarantee of sleep in the mix) Court and I (unless I make Court stay home and not subject him to hospitals again – didn’t we just get home?!) will go see Ewa and Sweet Pea Mikey. *sad face* Be good Baby Mikey! Get better. Have to.
 
Christmas Eve, Danish style was Christmas Eve…only 2 nights ago, can you believe it? John and Anne and Terry and Arne (I don’t actually know how to spell his name but he’s a terrific guy) had already started eating by the time Court and I entered the scene. Really, I have GOT to do something about this chronic lateness disease. I was SO ready too…and then I rememberd (as I always remember SOMETHING at the last minute) that Anne had asked (her only wish for Christmas) for a DVD of last Christmas’ family fun/torture (depends on who you ask). So I iDVD’d it but then waited in very tortured woe-is-me-and-my-lateness for a very long time while the program read and re-read and filtered and did whatever it needed to do before it spat out a real live DVD with stuff I had put on it. I felt so proud…and would have felt even better if it weren’t for the fact that this baby was well past it’s due date, and Court and I were way past our Christmas Dinner Date. I’m pretty sure John and Anne forgave us. Arne won the marzipan pig, so he’s happy, and Terry fled from the papparazi (which was me) which I thought was too bad because she is quite dynamic on film. I also don’t want to think that things I am doing are driving people away (unless that is the actual intent) but Anne and I have so much fun looking at our collective past media. We like memories.
 
Anne stole our raincoats. She’s a sneaky one. They disappeared the moment we stepped into her house in Port Costa…so I had to meet her in a neutral area by myself to make the trade. Solano Ave. Book Store. I was to park in front of Andronicos at a meter. I was then to go inside the store and wait in the Express line (as all the non-express lines flew like doves from a wedding)to buy money from the cashier in the form of a roll of quarters. I was to walk to my car and place a quarter in the meter standing at the passenger side bumper of my car, and I was then to notice that, in fact, I had just fed someone elses’s meter and mine was located at top left of the driver’s side. That’s how she knew it was me. Or would have, if she had been on the street. Instead, she was in the bookstore with her back to the door so I could lasso her with my cashmere scarf and scare the whole store when she screamed, though no one offered assistance. I explained my meter story to her to which she freaked out and said “I didn’t even remember to pay my meter!!!”. So we rushed across the street to feed her meter and the deal was set in motion. The deal was: Meet. Eat. Talk. Laugh a lot. Jacket Pass-off. Hug. Depart. We only strayed from this plan after eating at Zachary’s pizza, and trying to walk off a smidge of the food coma with Peets by straying into a few shops open the day after Christmas. I bought a beautiful cover for the futon I work on…question is: How do I muster the energy (both mental and physical) to clear off said futon and bundle it in it’s new duds? I got 2 episodes into Smallville Season 4 and 1 red coral and swarovski crystal necklace into my mental preparation, then got hungry and had to eat more Zachary’s pizza. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe tomorrow I get to see Baby Mikey. Maybe tomorrow he gets to go home. Maybe tomorrow I’ll get my priorities straight. I don’t want Ewa to hurt anymore. Get better Baby Mikey. Be Good. Love, Auntie Shelby 
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It’s 1:28 am on Thursday night. Christmas Eve looms ahead at the end of the week, followed briskly with Christmas Day. I’ve spent the last 2 weeks in bed with persnickity kidneys, and tomorrow I venture over the hill and across the bridge to the foot of the sleeping Indian Princess where I shall emplore my oh mighty urologist to make me all better. 

Perhaps due to the 7 bazillion drugs they threw at me while I was staying in the hospital (By the way, Stanford – great doctors, but it being a LEARNING facility, don’t expect anything other than SLOW.) and additionally the resident urologist taking a strong dislike to me (EREH?) has contributed to renaming what I usually refer to as “mild insomnia” to “STRESS of the NONE SHALL SLEEP type”.  

So Courtland gave me a blog because he wanted to sleep. Smart man. Don’t want to listen to the rants and raves of the Creative Writing Major, yet don’t want her to burst into tears crying, “You don’t even WANT to understand me!!!”? Give her a blog…in the olden days that was a journal, but journals being all taboo to flip through if it is not your own, she probably wasn’t going to feel truly fulfilled unless she thought there was some unsinister way for you to witness what goes on in her devious insane precious frail sick little mind. That unsinister way has come to be via my boyfriend (who is now asleep–look how fast that happens for him!) *sigh* and I now subject you, the reader (who could also be me later when I switch roles as I often do) to things that go bump in the night. Usually no one can hear them but me – these particular bumps – unless it is actually me running into pretty much anything in my apartment on my way somewhere not important at all. 

Someday we’ll find it, the rainbow connection. The lovers, the dreamers and me. I’ll let you know what kind of war I got into with the lovers and dreamers under the rainbow. They’re a rough lot. 
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