Hi, friends. Sorry for the hiatus. I was away and then I got Covid and then I just felt like I had nothing to say and who wants to be yet another person with nothing to say, who says it anyway.
Today, though, I have a story to share. It’s fairly graphic, so maybe don’t read on if gore is not your thing. So:
It’s Sunday night, after a long day at a climate change march and then a little Shofar blowing in the park. My eight year old and I are hungry, so we get Mexican take-out. She wants to go to our usual spot, but I insist on a new place because it’s new and why not try new things? It looks like a shithole but I am undeterred. My kid has rice and beans. The beans look unappetizing but she eats some anyway because she knows I can’t stand food waste (are you picking up on all the ways I have failed already before this story even gets going?). She goes to bed. About three hours later, I hear a sound that sounds a whole lot like the dog puking. Then my kid comes out of her room covered in vomit. I’m sure you don’t need any help on the visual, but I’m gonna help you anyway: she tried to catch it, so she has two fistfuls of it plus a whole bunch strewn down her chest and legs. As for her bedroom, OMG.
I walk her straight to the shower. I’m thinking: food poisoning, I got this. I clean her up as best I can but soon enough, she’s throwing up again. And again. I move her to the couch. We get into a routine of swapping out garbage bags every time she hurls. Then she needs the toilet while hurling. It’s like a gross comedy except it’s my kiddo.
I decide we need to upgrade to a bucket, but all I have is a bathroom garbage pail. Pail it is.
Back on the couch, she starts convulsing with each episode. Eyes rolling. I have never seen anything like this, it’s almost mesmerizing. But then she starts bringing up what I can only describe as black, gooey, sludgelike globs of tar. Holy shit, what the hell is that? Forget comedy, this is a straight-up horror movie. I discreetly whisk the pail away to examine its contents (ew) for evidence of blood. Is this blood? I swirl it around, like testing a good wine. If it’s not blood, what IS IT? I think through everything she’s eaten but nothing looked like this or had this color. Not even the beans, which were light brown and long since expelled. My child, my BABY, starts calling for me, weakly, because I’ve left her to examine the sludge like it’s a good wine.
I bring the pail back and another episode begins. I do not know what to do. I am trying not to panic. I start thinking I need an emergency telehealth call but the place I’ve used once has shut down and how stupid, she clearly needs to go to urgent care and every telehealth doc will tell me as much. Where do I go? It’s 11pm on a Sunday. PM Pediatrics, despite its name, is closed. There’s another urgent care I know is good, but I don’t think it’s attached to a hospital and I seem already to know we’re gonna get admitted. Meantime, more vomiting what is clearly blood. Blood, you idiot, is what I’m now thinking.
I’m gonna pause in this story just to say: this is when partnership matters. In a very practical sense, partnership has one person googling where the hell to take a child who’s vomiting blood while the other wipes this sweet child’s face and tries not to get hysterical. Partnership also matters just for the shared joy and burden of keeping this child alive. This child who is loved ferociously and with anguish by the parents raising her every day.
But back to my story. Because I am Type A, I have already bookmarked a children’s hospital on my phone’s map, though I seem to have forgotten as much in the moment. Then I remember. Should I take a Lyft or drive? Should I pack anything? What do I do about our dog? I forget my daughter’s stuffed polar bear/talisman. I grab a phone charger without the cord. I grab a sweater for her but nothing for me. I leave a garbage bag of vomit on the floor. I decide to drive because now, now, now, but almost right away, she is sick again. While I’m driving! The sludge seems to be getting worse. The convulsions are worse. It’s dark out, I don’t know this area of Brooklyn especially well, and I’m trying to reach behind me to wipe her face, keep her calm, and get us to the hospital. She throws up the whole way. We finally make it to the ER triage place and while I’m fumbling for IDs and insurance cards, she is vomiting into the pail, which is now 1/4 full so that when a doctor sees it and says, smilingly, “Chocolate, right?” and I say, “No,” his face shows me something no parent wants to see on a doctor’s face.
Then come the tests and the drugs and the ER all-nighter, which is honestly fascinating for its myriad of characters. I don’t know how I managed to take note of them, but I did. An angry dad with a voice so much deeper than what I’d expected, who is angry because no one is looking into his toddler son’s rash in a timely manner. A mom who insists her baby is sick and has to be admitted, even though the doctors seem to think he is just fine. I keep wondering if they should listen to her maternal instincts or if she is kind of a wackadoo. We are clearly the most serious case in there, though not that serious, it seems. One am, two, three, four. So many screaming kids, I think I’m gonna lose my mind. But the nurses all seem fine. I ask one how she does it and she just says, “Every job has its difficulties.”
Meantime, someone takes pictures of my kid’s vomit pail. They test it for blood because no one wants to think it’s blood. It’s blood. Which is vindicating because though I’d rather be wrong—who wants their kid to be throwing up blood?—I also want to be right because otherwise I’m just a hysterical, overreacting female.
At 4:30, freezing and very tired and somehow also sweaty, I start watching the Danish show Borgen, which has a new season. My kid is sleeping. Or trying to. They gave her some drug (thank you, universe, for this drug) and stopped the vomiting. Borgen is an interesting show and this season is maybe the most interesting just for complicating the main character to the point where we cannot root for her as easily as we once could. So I don’t really want to watch the show anymore, but I also can’t stop. I try to read the subtitles.
At five, I finally speak to my brother. I do not like to call my friends or family in the middle of a crisis (in the middle of the night, no less), which you might think belies my thesis that partnership in a crisis is valuable. But then I suggest we take note of the word partnership. My family and friends are great, but they can’t be partners in the raising and care of my child, and I don’t want them to be. I took on the job willingly and it is what it is.
I manage to find a friend who can rescue my dog, whom I’ve left alone all night and without breakfast. I reach my mom, who comes to the hospital right away with provisions like a sweater and a charger and some croissants. I am instantly relieved. We are admitted and from then on, everything is okay. It’s still not entirely clear what happened, just that all that violent retching likely burst some blood vessels and somehow it all came up black instead of brighter red. I dunno. My daughter’s been fine ever since, though I am a mess. I keep going back to that scene in my car. And thinking: this single parent thing is total shit. Which is a thought I almost never have. And also that I have failed, failed, failed and that if I’d made different choices in life she’d have had someone sitting there with her in the back of the car, holding her hand, wiping her face, rubbing her back and being a parent.
So, that’s my story. And just for telling it, I feel a little better. So thanks for indulging me. Also, if you live in Brooklyn, Maimonides Children’s Hospital is the way to go. They were great.
-Fiona