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Baby Kitty goes to the doctor
Yesterday Teri had to take Sebastian to the doctor for a blood test. This is the third or fourth time she's had to do that since he was born, but I was particularly dreading it this time.
You see, there's lead in our house; it's a long story, but basically we were screwed by our agent. We've kept things as clean as we can, using a HEPA vaccuum and making sure Sebastian drinks a lot of milk, but we still have to get his blood lead level monitored. When he was a baby Teri and her mother would take him to the hospital in Providence, where they drew the blood from his heel; I was always at work when that happened (thank god), but I'd get reports on how he cried and cried, and my heart would just break.
Incidentally, although my understanding is that ANY level of lead in the blood is harmful, his levels, while higher than I would hope, were within what is currently considered the "safe" range. If this test comes back okay, we can hope that he won't have to go through any more of those tests - and if there's any way to manage it, I will get us out of our house and into a new, lead-free house (in a better school system, too, if at all possible).
The odds are against that, though; housing is just too expensive in this area, and we don't make enough to swing a new house.
Yes, I'm bitter about that.
Anyway, I was more bothered this time than ever before because this time Sebastian is old enough to understand what is going on. The whole morning I found myself tearing up at the thought of my precious little boy having to go and get a needle stuck in his chubby little arm.
Teri called me from the car as soon as they were done. Sebastian had sobbed uncontrollably as the nurse had drawn the blood (two vials), but had stopped and was in the back seat. He was being "Baby Kitty".
That's one of his games: he calls me "Daddy Kitty", which is my clue that he's doing it (as I've mentioned before, sometimes we're Baby and Daddy Mole, and on particularly confusing days we're Baby and Daddy Mole-Kitty).
We chatted on the phone, but he didn't want to talk about the blood test so I didn't ask. When I got home that night, he insisted on showing me the gauze and tape on his arm; Teri had wanted to take it off, but he insisted on leaving it on to show me. He explained that the doctor had taken a "thread" from him. I guess the needle and relatively thin hypodermic looked like a thread as they filled with blood.
Teri wanted to give him a bath, so we had to take off his gauze; he cried and tried to run away, but he really needed to be cleaned up so we had to grab him and pull off the tape.
Ten minutes later he was happily converting our bathroom floor into a flood zone. :D
You see, there's lead in our house; it's a long story, but basically we were screwed by our agent. We've kept things as clean as we can, using a HEPA vaccuum and making sure Sebastian drinks a lot of milk, but we still have to get his blood lead level monitored. When he was a baby Teri and her mother would take him to the hospital in Providence, where they drew the blood from his heel; I was always at work when that happened (thank god), but I'd get reports on how he cried and cried, and my heart would just break.
Incidentally, although my understanding is that ANY level of lead in the blood is harmful, his levels, while higher than I would hope, were within what is currently considered the "safe" range. If this test comes back okay, we can hope that he won't have to go through any more of those tests - and if there's any way to manage it, I will get us out of our house and into a new, lead-free house (in a better school system, too, if at all possible).
The odds are against that, though; housing is just too expensive in this area, and we don't make enough to swing a new house.
Yes, I'm bitter about that.
Anyway, I was more bothered this time than ever before because this time Sebastian is old enough to understand what is going on. The whole morning I found myself tearing up at the thought of my precious little boy having to go and get a needle stuck in his chubby little arm.
Teri called me from the car as soon as they were done. Sebastian had sobbed uncontrollably as the nurse had drawn the blood (two vials), but had stopped and was in the back seat. He was being "Baby Kitty".
That's one of his games: he calls me "Daddy Kitty", which is my clue that he's doing it (as I've mentioned before, sometimes we're Baby and Daddy Mole, and on particularly confusing days we're Baby and Daddy Mole-Kitty).
We chatted on the phone, but he didn't want to talk about the blood test so I didn't ask. When I got home that night, he insisted on showing me the gauze and tape on his arm; Teri had wanted to take it off, but he insisted on leaving it on to show me. He explained that the doctor had taken a "thread" from him. I guess the needle and relatively thin hypodermic looked like a thread as they filled with blood.
Teri wanted to give him a bath, so we had to take off his gauze; he cried and tried to run away, but he really needed to be cleaned up so we had to grab him and pull off the tape.
Ten minutes later he was happily converting our bathroom floor into a flood zone. :D