Jamieson woke up at 5 a.m. last Thursday throwing up. He continued to throw up pretty much everything he drank (he wasn’t interested in eating) for most of the day, and took several naps. I was worried that he was getting dehydrated so we took him to the pediatrician, who of course said he would be fine. The pediatrician gave him a Sprite to drink—he was quite excited about this because he never gets to drink soda—but promptly threw the entire thing up (along with some applesauce, I think) the minute we walked in the front door.
Thankfully, that was the last of the upchucking, but his fever spiked to over 103 after he’d been asleep for a few hours. He has gradually gotten better over the past few days, but he’s been tired and hasn’t had much appetite.
I was really proud of how he handled himself while sick. He didn’t once get upset or cry about feeling bad or throwing up so much. Our family certainly does not discourage displaying emotions and feelings—in fact, we rather encourage that sort of thing—but I have to admit that him staying so calm and taking the vomiting in stride made my heart proud. Also, it makes me think that we are maybe doing this parenting thing correctly. If he can keep a level head while feeling horrible and puking his guts out, then perhaps we have successfully equipped him to handle other unpleasant things that life will throw his way.
The thing I didn’t mention yet is the fact that there is a patient with the Ebola virus being treated in Dallas right now, and it was tragically mishandled at the start (the hospital initially sent the man home, and he didn’t return until 2 days later, thus spreading the virus conceivably everywhere). So there are a lot of his family members in quarantine and a lot of secondary trace contacts, including schoolchildren, who are being quarantined or at least closely monitored. So… our son having a high fever and vomiting repeatedly just a day or two after this news broke was VERY nervewracking.
So late Thursday afternoon, shortly after the Sprite ended up all over the entryway and guest bathroom floor, a crazy storm blew through town. We are talking straight line winds around 90 miles per hour, and the rain and small hail to match it. It lasted all of about 20 minutes, but when it was over, the electricity across much of Dallas was out, and tree branches (and entire trees) were down everywhere. Three medium sized ones in the street in front of our house came from three houses down. We were lucky and only lost one tiny branch off our crepe myrtle. Two of my coworkers had their car windows smashed out when a huge branch fell in the parking lot at work. A fifth floor window on the building across the street from us blew out.
Our power was out until about 4:00 the next morning (about 12 hours total), and I feel very lucky that it wasn’t longer, because there are still some parts of town with no electricity. Many many people lost the entire contents of their refrigerators and freezers (including some new moms I know with frozen breastmilk. OUCH!). On Friday morning, there were no streetlights working during my entire drive to work. My normal 15-20 minute drive took me 90 minutes that day. And it was about 60 minutes to get home that night. Five days later, there are still some traffic lights either completely out or just blinking red.
Oh noes! A branch down off our crepe myrtle!
One other unusual event from the weekend: Sunday about 4:30 a.m., a car driving at an insanely high speed on the main street near our house took out a streetlamp, dragged it into the oncoming lanes of traffic, up into a park, over an embankment, and ended up in the creek. The street was littered with empty and full beer cans, bits of car, bits of streetlight, and things from the trunk of the car like soccer cleats and a tire iron. The police said that the occupants of the car were apparently not too injured to run. Oddly enough, they called a tow truck of their own accord to try and fish the car out of the creek. The police didn’t show up until about 2 hours later, simply because they didn’t know it happened. They were surprised to see a tow truck appear because they didn’t call it. Of course, a regular tow truck cannot haul a car up a 20 foot embankment so they had to get a winch truck out to haul it up over the side of the bridge. I am quite amazed that the noise from this event did not wake me up. I hope the occupants of the car are not too seriously injured (although how they escaped injury is quite beyond me) but I also hope that they are found and arrested. People drive WAY too fast up and down that street and there are always children walking up and down the sidewalks.
You don’t see that every day.
Also, apropos of nothing, this little guy sat still long enough for me to take his picture
