Dreaming

Nearly three weeks ago I came down with a cold that I have been not at all hyperbolically referring to in public as The Cold From Hell. Despite a few days now of feeling finally able to breathe during daylight hours without the blessed aid of Saint Sudafed, certain symptoms have lingered. My ears still feel clogged. I still feel tired. And my voice keeps failing me unexpectedly mid-word, cutting out like a bad audio cassette tape. 

Last night I hypothesized that my failure to recover must be the result of not getting enough sleep at night. Because despite feeling better during the day, I keep waking up struggling to breathe through a nose that feels stuffed with wet cotton, or coughing the sort of chest rattling night cough ordinarily associated with elderly chainsmokers.

So in an attempt to get at least eight hours of decent rest, last night I abandoned my bed and my husband (who is certainly handsome to look upon as the last thing I see before I close my eyes each night, but, sadly, snores like a rusty chainsaw). And I bedded down on the sofa, propped diagonally atop a pile of scientifically arranged throw pillows.

I felt more comfortable than I had in days, and fell asleep almost instantly. 

So of course, at 2 a.m., the phone rang.

At first, in my first-good-sleep-in-three-weeks fog, I associated the harsh ringing sound with the tornado sirens that woke me up this past Sunday evening, announcing the storm that did this to my porch.

There's something wrong with the house, the small, awake part of my brain tried to explain to the rest of me. You have to get up.

Then as the ringing continued I awakened enough to realize that the sound was in fact the telephone and also that it was a ridiculous hour for anyone to be calling my house unless there was some sort of terrible emergency.

So I threw off the covers and popped out of bed, er, couch, only to hear the answering machine pick up. A deep, drawling drunken man's voice screamed, "WHAT?!?" so loudly my answering machine's speaker crackled. And then the line clicked off.

Wrong number.

(I hope. Because if that was some sort of prank, Mr. Drunk Dialer on a Cell Phone in 636, you need to go back to phone pranking class and learn how to block your number. Ahem.)

After that I had a hard time getting back to sleep. The streetlights outside my living room window were too bright. The furnace downstairs was too loud. I tossed and turned for about an hour and then I fell asleep and I dreamed two dreams. It feels like ages since I've had a dream I can clearly remember. And yet, whether thanks to my couch, The Cold From Hell, or Mr. Drunk Dialer, last night I had two: 

In the first dream, I was volunteering at my son's school on a field trip. It was lunch time and I was helping to prepare a set of boxed lunches that had been brought along for the kids but I realized that despite telling me otherwise no one at the school had contacted the catering company or read the ingredients on anything to see whether or not the lunches were peanut-safe. So I was reading the ingredients on every variety of lunch to see which one might be safe for my son to have. And people from the school in the dream (who weren't actually people in my son's real life school, just people with vague and anonymous faces) kept telling me, "You have to take care of this problem this yourself. We don't have time to help you." And then as I was sorting through the boxes one of the sandwiches fell out and it was peanut butter. And I tried to get to the sink to wash my hands but other parents (who again, weren't actual parents I know in real life but some sort of Platonic stand in) kept blocking me and saying "We were here first. There's no room."  And then one of the dream school's administrators said to me, in a smarmy voice, "Well it will be a shame if your son has nothing to eat today, and it would have been terrible if we had served him that peanut butter. But at least this is the first time we have made such a mistake." And as I stood there wringing my hands like Lady Macbeth trying to get the peanut butter off, I started screaming, again and again, to no one in particular, "THIS IS NOT ACCEPTABLE!"

It was very melodramatic. And, I have to say, the first time I have ever had a nightmare with food as a villain.  Or for that matter a dream that in any way involved peanut butter. I get the feeling, however, that this anxiety dream might wind up as a permanent replacement to that recurring dream I used to have where I would spend all day on the first day of college trying to find my classes and yet somehow manage to miss all of them and then my advisor would scream at me and tell me I was kicked out of the program.

Ahem.

The second dream was much better. In my second dream I was at a BlogHer conference, sitting in the audience at a panel, and some political argument broke out among the audience members, and women were standing up and shouting and one well-dressed young woman even gestured a threat to splash another with a bottle of Fiji water.

(For people who have never been to BlogHer, allow me to note that this sort of bloggers-gone-wild wet t-shirt catfight thing would NEVER HAPPEN. Well, except for maybe at the MamaPop party but that would be totally acceptable.)

And then in my dream my friend Erin Kotecki Vest stood up, looking as healthy as she ever has, and walked across the entire large room to a microphone and made some sort of brilliant, unbelievably logical, earthshaking statement of the sort that makes sense beyond sense within a dream and seems to expose some important cog in the inner workings of the universe, even though you can never remember, after you wake up, exactly what was said. And everyone grew silent and then burst into applause. And everyone was hugging.

I don't believe in prophetic dreams. But a dream of mine ever deserved to come true I do think it would be my dream of Erin, healthy, walking, and kicking rhetorical ass.

Besides, if a politics-based water splashing fight ever broke out during a panel at BlogHer, I think it would be great publicity, don't you?

A Cookie Like My Heart

It has been over a year now since my son had a sudden and violent allergic reaction to a peanut butter cookie, after years of eating Reese's Peanut Butter Cups and peanut-flavored granola bars and Peanut M&Ms and french fries fried in peanut oil without a problem.

I've already cried over it; I've already ranted; I've already reorganized my pantry and sent lists to the school and compiled the careful, well-researched, incredibly short list of Restaurants That Are Mostly, Probably Safe. I've already dutifully, repeatedly reminded myself of the much longer and much more upsetting list of Childhood Diseases That Could Be Worse.  I've already adjusted to the constant mental presence of  this terrible knowledge, that the wrong bite of food could hurt or kill my son at any moment. I've made the syringe that contains the emergency medication that could save his life as essential an extension of my body as my glasses or my purse.

Out of life-and-death necessity I keep his allergy in mind every waking minute which after a while from an emotional standpoint is pretty much the same as not thinking about it at all.  There seems to be a part of my brain that just does it, now. Like the part that remembers how to walk. I read ingredients and thoroughly question and instruct teachers and party hosts and babysitters and waitresses on autopilot. Solving a safe path through the world for him has for the most part become an intellectual not an emotional enterprise.

If I weren't like this, now, I'd be constantly crazy with worry and guilt and regret over aspects of childhood that I never recognized as being all that important until they were lost to him. Which just wouldn't do. Anxious, guilty, regretful people make mistakes, and this is an area where I cannot bear allow myself room for serious error.

But there are still moments, once in a while when the fact of his allergy hits me like a kick in the chest, the way it did on the day I first learned of it, and I struggle for a minute to breathe.

Like today when I was at a fancy little boutique grocery store and walked past their bakery display, blooming with beautiful extravagantly decorated heart shaped Valentine's cookies in every flavor and size.

I used to make a point, when he was younger, of buying my son, on the spur of the moment, little surprise presents of candy or food. Ridiculous things, sometimes, like rainbow lollipops the size of his head (that I knew he would never finish). I'm quite a stickler for health food in general -- in my house, whole, natural foods rule the table and fruits or vegetables are required with every sit-down meal .  But I'm also a foodie, and a hobby baker, and I'm not ashamed to confess that I've never met an oversized artisan brownie I didn't like. And my son started out as a pathologically picky eater -- so resistant to eating, in fact, that for a frightening period of time he made himself  ill.

So once his palate began to expand it became a joy to me to surprise him on impulse with pretty and decadent foods. Once in a while, when I saw a giant, artistically frosted cookie or a beautiful piece of chocolate artifice at a store -- the sort that makes your heart skip a beat when you see it, that reminds you of pressing your childish face to the glass in sad longing while your mother said, "No, not that, the smaller one" -- the sort you aren't supposed to spoil a child with -- I would buy it and give it to him, trying to tell him without words, See, this is what I wanted to tell you about the fun of food. This what you have been missing.

But today I knew without looking -- I've shopped hear before -- that not one of the beautiful heart shaped cookies would be labeled PEANUT FREE. I couldn't just pick one without thinking and buy it and meet him with it at the door when he comes home from school. The cookies at the bakery are just another one of so many things -- like the cake at most birthday parties and the candy from most candy shops and the ice cream from ice cream parlors -- that are off limits for him now, and may be off limits for life.

Which is why this weekend I am fairly certain I will wind up baking more homemade heart-shaped cookies, in every hue,  than one child could possibly eat, and wishing I could make them as pretty as the ones at the store.

Things I Have Recently Learned

I have recently learned that teachers who can tell the difference between a picky eater saying a food tastes weird because he's picky and a picky eater saying a food tastes weird because he's suddenly and totally unexpectedly developed an allergy to it and is about to go into anaphylaxis are worth their weight in gold. Especially when that teacher tells you later that she is so sorry this reaction happened under her watch. (Sorry? For jumping in and making my kid toss out the Cookie of Death when lesser classroom heroes may have told him to shut up and eat? Seriously, that action earned you possible naming rights to my next kid.)

I have recently learned that yes, despite his eventual total recovery from his allergic reaction after a double dose of Benadryl, my son did in fact show several bright waving red flags indicating anaphylaxis during his allergy attack, and the emergency room doctor who treated him should have given him a child-sized shot of epinephrine immediately instead of a second dose of Benadryl, and in fact took a big fat unnecessary risk by not doing so.

(So, if your small child ever eats something and then immediately complains of an itchy tongue, breaks out in hives, develops facial swelling, flushes red all over, complains of stomach cramps, and then starts coughing without cease, and you take him to the hospital and some stonefaced overtired ER doctor who seems irked at having to even speak to you tells you to just give your kid a little more Children's Benadryl, PUNCH HIM IN THE FACE STICK HIM WITH HIS OWN NEEDLES make sure you politely insist that the doctor give your child an age-appropriate dose of epinephrine.)

I have recently learned that if your primary care doctor's office staff, who are normally quite competent, call the wrong phone number to tell you the results of a key blood test indicating the possible severity of your son's brand new peanut allergy, even though you had called the office just one hour prior to confirm with the staff which number they could reach you at to give you the results, and then they leave a useless message on your answering machine saying that the results have come in without actually telling you what those results are, even though you've officially authorized the doctor's office to leave a message with the actual test results if you don't answer the phone, and then they close their office phones ten minutes early on a Friday, so that even when you miraculously manage to arrive home and hear the useless misdirected message just in time to call the doctor's office staff back according to their publicly stated phone hours, you still can't get a hold of anyone to give you the damn blood test results, and you realize you won't be able reach anyone at the doctor's office at all until Monday, and so you track down the number of the blood lab that did the test to call the lab yourself, by God — when that happens, some really nice guy at the blood lab named Pete, when he hears you trying not to cry with frustration as you relate this story to him on the phone, will totally bend protocol and fax you a fast-tracked application form so you can get the test results faxed straight to your house from the lab. (Thank you, Nice Blood Test Lab Guy Named Pete.)

I have recently learned that all those parents of kids with serious food allergies were totally right when they told me about so many people, smart people, good people, even medically trained people, not taking food allergies at all as seriously as they take other serious, potentially life-threatening health problems.

That it's really difficult even for me to wrap my mind around the idea that my child could theoretically now be as seriously endangered by a large bag of peanuts as a loaded unlocked gun, because that idea just feels so patently absurd.

That many people will ask you what medical steps you are taking to deal with a brand new food allergy, and many people will try to help you find information about food allergies, and many people will tell you all about how happy hearing about your experience makes them that their kids don't have food allergies, and many people will remind you how lucky you are because "it could be worse!"

But only a few very kind and thoughtful people will think to ask you how you feel about having just a few days ago watched your child narrowly escape death by cookie. By a #&@!& @!*&%!!! cookie!

I have recently learned that I feel pretty awful about that whole experience of holding my kid's hand in a speeding car and feeling totally helpless while he flushed redder and redder and his lips swelled and he coughed uncontrollably and I tried to stay totally calm and comfort him by talking to him about innocuous things in a cheerful voice all while wondering whether he might stop breathing at any moment, and what I would do if he did, all because he had taken two bites of a cookie.

That if I think too hard about it now, I can relive it in excruciating detail. That the whole watching your child have a bad allergic reaction thing is wretched, actually. That it sucks. That I really don't recommend panicked trips to the hospital as a regular family excursion.

I have recently learned that those really thoughtful people I mentioned, those people who take the time to ask a parent who has just experienced her child having a serious allergic reaction how she feels about what just happened, can make that parent feel a whole lot better.

I have learned that I am lucky, that it could have been worse.

I have learned that my five-year-old does not cry when I tell him he can't eat the fries at his favorite restaurant, or when I say he can't always have the same treats other children are having school. That when he sees other children eating what he no longer can. right in front of him, he does not scowl at them or mutter about how life isn't fair.

That he did not throw a fit when I took the bag of candy his grandmother sent him, and gave it away to the kids next door.

That instead of getting angry or upset about the long, long list of restrictions he now suddenly faces due to his allergy, he will instead (usually) tell me that chips are just as nice as fries, that he doesn't mind asking his teacher first before trying a cookie, that we can always buy more candy, that EpiPens aren't quite as scary as vaccine shots, that he doesn't want me to worry about him.

I have recently learned that my son is braver than I am.

That stylish, durable, comfortable, affordable, boyish medical alert bracelets for brave little boys that are not made of mystery metal or mystery plastic or some cheap nickel alloy are nearly impossible to find locally in St. Louis, but are available on the internet.

That your friend with a daughter with diabetes will not only answer your middle-of-the-night emails about where to find nice kids' medical bracelets, but ask her Twitter friends to help you out.

That I find having to wait several days for my kid's medical ID bracelet to arrive in the mail really, really, really annoying. Like, annoying enough to consider buying myself an engraving machine and making my own.

That my son's favorite kind of candy, that he wanted to give out on Valentine's Day, plain M&Ms, are now totally forbidden to him, because Mars does not segregate its production lines and Peanut M&Ms sometimes slip into the plain M&M package.

That I can order nut-free candy-coated chocolate pieces that theoretically also melt in your mouth and not in your hand on the internet. At double the price of the regular kind. Plus shipping.

That I am willing to pay double the price of the regular kind plus shipping. Not just for my kid, but, if necessary, for his whole elementary school class. Just so he can feel normal on Valentine's Day.

That Chipotle and Cici's Pizza and Burger King are peanut-free restaurants. That Chick-fil-A and Chili's are not.

That I am channeling so much ridiculous energy into things like getting my kid a decent ID bracelet and finding some nut-safe candy before Valentine's Day and making spreadsheets of restaurant nutrition information because those are problems I can fix. I can fix those things. I need to do things I can fix right now.

Because I can't fix him.

I can't fix the peanut allergy.

Not right now.

Maybe not ever.


***

Bonus Thing I Have Recently Learned:

That, according to the long-awaited results of his allergy blood test, my son, who has been begging me for a pet cat almost every day since the day he spoke his second word (which was "Kit-tee-cat!" which later changed, adorably, to the inventive Spanglish hybrid,"Gato-ki!" a joyous cry I heard sung out daily, for years, to real cats toy cats and pictures of cats and shadows that sorta looked like cats, with more enthusiasm than "Mama," until he was somehow suddenly old enough to hand me written explanations of Why We Should Have Cats instead) is apparently not only suddenly allergic to peanuts but also suddenly allergic to cats.

Nice one, universe. Nice.

*sigh*