What was the thing that Sarah and I were doing? Oh, yes, at the hospital trying to figure out the dogs.
It's always the dogs. They keep us grounded. We can't go too far for too long without really thinking it through, and that’s their plan. It keeps us close. And we appreciate that.
"I'll go to work for a little bit and then you go home—no, wait." I'd started talking without a plan but continued anyway.
"I'll call someone to let in the dogs—"
"And there's the cat," said Sarah, the voice of the not dogs.
And I wasn't even thinking about the cold-blooded creatures we've acquired. They survive too well to get attention. It's our warmth that makes us so high-maintenance.
I needed to get some video with a client.
"It shouldn't take me too long to do this video shoot, and then I'll go to the house," I lied the way my perennial optimism makes me utterly oblivious to precedent. It would take me twice as long to do the shoot. Thank goodness a neighbor was available. She knows the dogs and sent photos of her giving them treats as well as confirmation that she pet the cat, which sounds like code for something.
Meanwhile, there are children. One of whom has a driver's test in just two days and the other whose social activity schedule is not unlike someone running for office at nine years old. Those concerns are gagged by our middle guy who keeps setting off hospital alarms. He needs to stop bending his arm, which is about all the activity he's had in 48 hours.
We've just found out he has juvenile onset Type 1 Diabetes and whenever he kinks his elbow, so goes the insulin drip. It's great to get a diagnosis, especially one that is treatable. But goddamn. What a nightmare.
This whole thing starts with me screeching. Well, it started before that, but it escalated with my screech. Otto had been sick. And I can't tell you how ironic or coincidental it is that I came home from helping a friend with an autoimmune disease to find my son wasting away from one.
As he evaporated before our eyes, we hauled him around town trying to find solutions. Literally carrying him at some points, which became easier and easier as in five days he went from 104 pounds to just 86. All the muscle he'd worked for this year—I'm not gonna say it's gone. It’s hibernating.
I'll stop whining and fire off this mantra: we know what it is and we know what we have to do. Reset Button punched.
But back to whining. The Karen came out of me on day five.
I shrieked to Sarah. "I don't like this!" And I sounded crazy. And I kind of liked it. Because when the crazy leaps out of you like that, you are no longer piloted by societal conventions. You are driven by primal need: my boy is getting screwed. "It's probably a bacterial thing. We're going to get him some antibiotics," said the face of health care, and we were happy to have a solution. That was around day 4.
So there were some spots where we thought, "Oh, we're okay." We were so young and dumb. By Wednesday, he vomited his antibiotics. And that's when I shrieked. Karens aren't necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes you need to summon your inner Karen.
Hold on, I have to come up with a different name. The good Karens get wrongly impugned by this stupid trend.
Primal something. Primal Dick? Yeah?
My Primal Dick came out of me.
Ok, no. No names or anything anatomical.
Anger Pegasus.
My Anger Pegasus flew out of my throat and I rode that pissed-off horse to the doctor's office. At this point, Otto leaned on me with my arm wrapped around him as if I were helping him off a football field. We could walk about ten yards and then stop. He was struggling so much that he asked me to shoot him. What we didn't know was that his pancreas had shut down. The insulin his body had used to integrate sugar into his cells was gone, and so his body was actually devouring itself by relying on fat for fuel. That, in turn, releases ketones as a byproduct, which gradually acidifies his blood. All of this biological weaponry was taking place in the kid who asked me to stop talking to him so he could die peacefully. Haha jokes, we thought.
After a wait, we got into our little room. It's always nice to get your own little room. Sometimes it feels like a mental trick to make you wait even longer. But our doctor, typically of good standing, showed up quickly and suggested that this mound of bones I'd brought in probably had a stomach virus. Part of me left me. The Anger Pegasus leaped from my soul and left vapor trails as he guided me to the right place. It's a little mountaintop called Are You Fucking Kidding Me. Here we had a kid who, a week ago, set the sit-up record in his class. A pubescent bench press beast who greeted every reflective surface with topless nudity. And now he lay there in the flaccidity of adult inaction (myself included). I asked her to please test all of his fluids. Blood. Sweat. PH his pee. Mop his nostril. Take some hair. Swab his soul. Put a stethoscope to his future.
She left the room and Sarah texted. There's levity and crosstalk. Matt would not be in Denver.
The conversation of our pre-diabetic selves ends here. You don't see it but there's this space that becomes the concrete of our new foundation. In a world of conversation and information, the quiet filled the void of testing around and finding out. The doctor returned with this diagnosis: drive carefully but quickly to the nearest Emergency Room.
And then we arrive. For some reason, the ER parking was blocked with road cones. I would eventually retrieve it.
Now, I know type 1 diabetes is very common and people live very long, successful lives. But it's still kind of Whoa. A punch to the brain with the lingering anger that it had to get this far. As we walked in a slow parade through the hospital to the intensive care unit, the nurse told me Otto would be in for a long night. The insulin could only be introduced slowly, drip by drip, and we'd need as much patience and understanding as possible. I'd thought that was just in getting his science homework done. New levels had been unlocked.
Also, it kind of makes me want to petition the body. Why can't we have a check engine light? Maybe a little involuntary squeal that alarms overly confident doctors. Instead, when something goes wrong, there's an all-out maelstrom of terror. I mean a bad dude at a bar gets unceremoniously escorted out, but you get one single-celled germ in your body and you shit your pants in a 7/11. I really wish we could find some way to smooth that out a bit. At some point, a defunct pancreas should have us blink an emergency SOS and not turn our freaking blood into acid.
Things would turn around. Nurses performed their casual heroism and doctors did their best to make eye contact. The ICU would bid us farewell for the general and much less screamy recovery ward. Now we’re all going to diabetes school and learning how many carbohydrates are in Cheez-its. Otto has taken on this new role with the casual saunter of a kid who’s seen a thing or two.
And, with that, Anger Pegasus makes a most regal departure into the sunset of my rage.
We worry about things that don't happen but get run over by things we've never once thought about. It should make us all paranoid spirals of failure. How can we possibly worry about everything ever? Not saying I don't try. There, of course, is the lesson: turn your worry energy into adapting. You know the old canard: it's not what happens to you, but how you handle the alcohol you're going to want to consume.
And then there’s this little cutie about how it could mean we all get better together.
Props to all the kids for getting up during a holiday week for D school.
If he has to stab himself repeatedly and be on a routine, well, then, I'm gonna let that inspire me. Here we are on a new Launch Pad. Our old trajectory brought us back to earth. Sarah and me rifle through papers quietly pondering medical expenses but both of us are pretty stoked to get started.
If all goes well soon we'll have a sweaty child flexing at the dinner table.
I'm sorry, Otto, that you had to go through that. And Eliot and Quin.
Oh, and the dogs.
