Outbreak

Are you familiar with the movie Outbreak? Well, I think I might have been starring in the sequel this week and I don’t remember signing up for the casting call. Wednesday afternoon my son and I were working on our collective projects at the kitchen table while my daughter supervised and banged out her own rhythm from her highchair. Suddenly my boy shrieks that something is wrong with his sister’s hand. Sure enough she has two large blisters/boils on her hand. Thus, off to the doctor we went. Half way to the doctor’s office the boy proclaims he is tired and passes out in the back of the car, I should have been suspicious right then as he never confesses to a need for sleep and only powers off when the lights go out at night.

Once at our appointment, my son climbs into a chair in the office and goes back to sleep. Our doctor is unavailable so we see another doctor from the same practice. She appears baffled by the blisters, which we discover reach beyond my baby’s hand. She describes them as “atypical” and lances one to take a sample for testing. Now, I am no medical expert, but atypical was not a comforting description to me. The screaming baby (remember she just had a bulging blister lanced) wakes my whiny boy. He takes great offense at his sister’s mistreatment and requests that she be given a sticker and a band-aid to right all of the wrongs she has been subjected to. With few more answers than we had prior to our appointment we leave the doctor’s office with the promise of an antibiotic that is our “best bet” to address my girl’s rash.

Now in route to the Target pharmacy to retrieve my girl’s prescription, my son once again hits the snooze button in his car seat. This can’t be good. We get to the store and head to the pharmacy. They haven’t received our prescription yet, so we are to check back in a few minutes. My son asks to ride in the cart and is very quiet. His sister is asleep in her car seat. Most would probably enjoy this respite and peace, especially since it is rare.  However, I can hear the creepy horror music start playing in my head as I anticipate the probable price I will soon pay for the silence. After about thirty minutes we return to the pharmacy counter; still no scrip. The lovely ladies call our doctor’s office; closed. They call the answering service and leave a message for the doctor. They suggest we continue to shop and check back in a few more minutes. I push the kids around and I pick up several items I know we need and strategically place them in the cart around the limp 4-year-old body that is sprawled out in the space. He is listless and begins to beg to go home. His sister has managed to grow two new blisters during our wandering. We circle back around to the counter and the pharmacist just shakes her head. My little guy asks to get out of the cart. His feet hit the ground and out of the corner of my eye I see his blue Icee make a reappearance and land on the floor. He looks traumatized as he wails, “I hate when my mouth throws up.” I want to cry, “me too!”  Down on the linoleum with only a wet wipe between me and the vomit, I wonder how such a pleasant day went so wrong.

We have now been in the store for over two hours. Afraid to leave until the pharmacy at least gets the scrip and aware that my entourage and I will just have to come back to the store when it is ready anyway, we press on. The begging for home has gotten louder and my daughter is awake and ticked off. Who wouldn’t be when her brother is making the sounds of death from the back of the cart? We have made 3 trips to the family bathroom, countless laps around the store and the contents of the cart have grown from just necessities to a haphazard collection of “interesting” crap. I am tired and perhaps not in my right mind as I ponder the similarities between my children and the individuals in the movie Outbreak. I mean these kids have gone downhill fast. The littlest one is screeching like a banshee and her skin is bubbling up like bacon in a frying pan. The big one has hurled, is threatening to do so again, and his head is on fire. About that time a Target employee asks me if I need help finding anything. I fight the urge to ask her to call the CDC and warn them of an outbreak. Instead I say, “No, thank you. We are just looking.”

In the end my husband came and paroled us from the prison where the guards all wore red shirts. The prescription was eventually located and filled, the children survived without their organs liquefying as I had feared, and I am now the proud owner of a ton of junk I didn’t know I needed, including my very own copy of Harry and the Hendersons. Who knows, maybe next Wednesday we will reenact that film.