Interrupted

My Life Thus Far
2006-01-28 04:28:01 (UTC)

Roseola and Childhood Depression

I had one of those days that was best left unlived. By
that I mean, I wish I'd never woken up. Never got out of
bed. Never left the house. Never showed my face unto the
day that is called January 27, 2006. In a nutshell, I had
a bad day. Could you tell?

It started out okay. I got up, got myself and the girls
ready and headed out the door. I dropped them off with
little incident and headed to the gym. It was beyond
crowded. And because I was there at 6:30am, it was mostly
active duty and they have head of the line priviliges
until 7am. So, I had to wait to use my favorite machine. I
know, not that big a deal, but it gets worse.

I was running a little late leaving the gym, but I still
managed to get to my extern on time. It wasn't such a bad
experience. I did some periodontal charting, created some
new patient folders, filed them and basically got
acclimated to the working environment of the practice. It
was great. At 1pm I was gathering up my things to go, when
my cellphone rang. It was Gen. Apparently Kiki's daycare
had been trying to get ahold of me for 2 hours because
Kiki had a 103 degree temperature and it was rising! So, I
had to throw that Impala into hyper-speed (I think I used
half a tank of gas just to go 10 miles). I picked Kiki up,
took her to the emergency room, sat around for 5 hours,
watched them stick a catheter into her bladder (urine
sample) and miss vein after vein in her hand (blood
sample) only to tell me there was no reason for her 103
temp. okay.

I finished in the ER just in time to make it to Kiki's
well-baby check-up that I'd already scheduled earlier this
week. Her pediatrician looked her over, asked a few
questions about her behavior and health over the last few
weeks and diagnosed her with Roseola. It can't be detected
by any type of test, and if you aren't familiar with
childhood illnesses, it can be easy to miss, but once I
read up on it, all of the symptoms sound familiar and I
wish I'd seen it coming. Thankfully it isn't serious and
she'll never get it again once she gets over it. It's a
disease (viral infection) that only affects babies 6
months to 2 years old.

When I went to pick Annie up from daycare, her care
provider informed me that the resident child psychologist
evaluated Annie's behavior and suggest that Annie be put
into counseling. She's suffering from childhood
depression! Can you believe that. The psychologist things
it has a lot to do with my depression rubbing off on her
and the sudden departure of my parents from her life. The
psychologist thinks Annie is aware of much more than she's
letting on to and just doesn't understand it. I feel so
bad that my problems are affecting Annie. I may be
neglecting my own mental health, but I can't jeopardize
her's. I'll make her an appointment on Monday.

Thankfully, when I got home, Snookie was home and happy to
see me and I handed Kiki over and took a great big sigh of
relief. What a day. I made tacos for dinner (with ground
turkey instead of ground beef. Gotta keep it healthy!) and
we just enjoyed a quiet family dinner. It was a good end
to a not so good day. Thank God it's over.

I'm going to go cuddle with my Snookie. I think I've
earned it. Ciao.




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