Slow and Steady Wins the Race...

I thought I was going to the hospital today for a quick appointment.  I ended up spending 4 hours there.  I have had bilateral mastitis basically since JJ was born. I have been on several rounds of oral antibiotics with no reprieve.  My OBGYN was at a loss, none of the other OBs or midwives knew what to do either.  I was already on the strongest oral regimen.  I still have fevers and the infection is spreading.

Today I saw the infectious disease specialist, since apparently I am the only postpartum patient that this has ever happened to at this hospital.  I figured since mastitis was so common, it was no big deal, but apparently, my case of persistent, antibiotic resistant mastitis was cause for more concern than I bothered to give it.

I brought Jada with me today.  Mark met me there but had to leave before old man river walked in.  I much prefer younger to older doctors.  Older doctors tend to be too conservative, and resistant to the new age (but really, very old age) parenting ways I have adopted.  They hate co-sleeping and think breast feeding is only necessary for a few weeks.  Of course, his very first piece of advice was to quit breast feeding.  I remained calm.  I told him simply that this was in no way an option.  I think he was annoyed that his easy-way-out solution wasn't going to fly with me.  Nope, I'm just going to make you think a little bit harder than that.

The solution: a 10 day stretch of daily IV antibiotics.  Fantastic.  Because I can think of no better way to spend my summer maternity leave than to be pumped full of high dose antibiotics that will no doubt, while curing me of my painful infection, will cause some fabulous GI side effects...perhaps thrush even.  Nice.

I have my infusion, all the while trying to nurse and calm a fussy JJ without bending my left arm too much.  I await the call from my insurance company..I am just so excited for this bill!  I am set up with a home IV infusion kit and a visiting nurse.  Finally, I am allowed to go home.  Jada is sleeping peacefully for now.

I make the 45 minute trip home.  Its a lovely drive mostly, even the highway is a two lane and typically quite calm.  I am reflecting, as I do when I drive, since the option of music is out, now that I have joined the parenting club.  I now enjoy silence, I appreciate, where once I loathed it and longed to fill any gaps in noise with more noise, and noise on top of that.

I see an old truck on the side of the highway.  50  feet behind it, a man, walking on the edge of the highway, toward the truck.  He is dressed in dirty torn jeans and a cut off flannel shirt.  He has longer hair and a scruffy beard.  He is carrying a rock back toward the truck. I am momentarily annoyed at the disruption in my thoughts, because now I have to move over a lane.  I was in a driving zone, on autopilot.  I enjoy driving when you don't have to think about driving.  The lumberjack broke my non- concentration.  What the hell was he doing walking along the highway, presumably toward his truck with no evidence of tools or gasoline to fix a breakdown?  I pass him and briefly glance in my mirror to glide back into my lane, and I see it.  The man is holding that rock at an awkward angle, away from his body.  Except now, it is clearly not a rock, but a small turtle.  This man had pulled over on a busy highway, walked a hundred feet, and risked his neck to move it to safety.  And not just side-of-the-road safety, he was taking it back to his truck.  He was actually going to drive this little hitchhiker to a location more hospitable to little hard shelled reptiles.

Suddenly, my long, annoying day was over.  I am smiling at this burly man carrying his little critter friend, away from his body like he was afraid of it, a little.  And I know that this is what I want.  A world where a person like this cares enough to acknowledge that a few minutes of his time could save what some would see as a pretty insignificant creature.  A world where we are able to acknowledge that while we are the most destructive creatures who live here,  we should care about who we share our world with.  I want to live in a world where people respect each other, are remotely aware of how to cut down on damage we do here with our toxins, and poisons and destruction...and maybe try to prevent that a little.


That is the world I want to raise my children in.  I'm still smiling...