Bless Her Heart!

My daughter S has had a rough year, health wise. By most accounts, she appears to be a normal, healthy seven year old. She is a little taller than her classmates, no thanks to me, and she does have a booty that would make J Lo jealous. But other than that, she is like the other kids. Except this year, she has had a string of incidents and episodes that seem to be coming too frequently to be coincidental.

She started with her spectacular tumble down the stairs, which resulted in a sprained ankle and an assortment of bruises. She looked more like a college student after a rough weekend than a first grader. After a few days of limping around and a note from me excusing her from running laps, she stopped milking it and resumed normal activity.

On the heels of that, she developed a mystery virus. She had a normal fever, not brain cooking high, but she had delusions. She woke up from her bad dreams confused and screaming, raving about a big machine that destroyed my bedroom, which somehow she felt she caused. The next morning was no better, when she awoke to the cats, the two we normally have, but somehow she hallucinated a room of them, coming after her. By the time I took her to the doctor that day, her fever had broken and she was fine.

No sooner was that over when she broke her finger playing goalie at her second soccer game. That resulted in three weeks of her wearing a splint on her finger, along with three weeks of her asking me if she could take the splint off her finger. I am pretty sure there was a week and a half in there of me telling her to put the splint back on her finger.

We took a trip to the beach while her finger was recuperating, and on the way home from that, she puked all over herself in the back seat, during a repeat viewing of the library’s copy of “Mary Poppins.” I doubt she was the first kid to throw up all over a library DVD, but it was certainly the first time one of my kids did it. At least she threw up on herself and not the actual DVD player, but we still had one of those episodes where the entire family stood on the shoulder of the highway, screaming at each other while the puking child stands in her underwear, crying, with vomit tinged mucus running down her face. Normally we pass one of those families and think, Suckers. Not that day. I don’t know if she ate something bad or had a stomach bug, but she was the only one who got sick, and it only happened once. It is possible that delicious bacon and cheddar croissant was too much to handle that day.

Did I mention she is also afflicted with plantar warts? She would kill me for telling you this, but she has two warts on her foot, just like her sister did a few months ago. Lucky for me, I kept the unused portion of ridiculously expensive genital wart cream her pediatrician prescribed, which came in individual daily doses that my husband somehow managed to make last for a month. When I took off her band-aid off last night, it took all the skin surrounding the wart with it, leaving what looks like a wart castle teetering over a shallow moat of ripped flesh. Only worse than that.

This past weekend, we took a family hike on a misty morning. She loved it, climbing up the slopes, skipping up the trail. She didn't love it so much when she tripped over a tree root and landed hard on her knee, skinning and bruising it. I didn't love it either when she cried at the top of her lungs for the rest of the hike.

Yesterday, she woke up with an angry stye in the corner of her eye. It is red and inflamed and itchy and streaky. I have washcloths at the ready to soak in hot water and press over that pustule, trying to relieve some of her discomfort. So far, it’s not working that well, but I figure there isn’t much else that can be done, and quite frankly, I am tired of paying her pediatrician to tell me what I already know.

So, is it a fluke? Is she having a bad streak, or is her immune system compromised? Am I overreacting, or is she just a little klutzy? I try to remain optimistic, but I am at the point where I am ready to buy a giant plastic hamster ball for her. I am just a phone call away from ordering enough bubble wrap to make her a protective suit, and I am pretty sure I can find those astronaut diapers online somewhere.