Murphy's Law At Its Worst

Here is a definition of Murphy's Law from Wikipedia : "It is most often cited as "Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong" (or, alternately, "Whatever can go wrong will go wrong, and at the worst possible time, in the worst possible way" I can honestly attest to this statement as how this past week played out for me and my family.

The week started out with my husband trapping a squirrel in our roof. He didn't do it on purpose, in fact, he took a good look into the roof from the point of entrance with a flashlight and only nailed the area shut when he saw no signs of the squirrel at all. Evidently the poor creature was sleeping somewhere inside our roof and woke up in the middle of the night to discover it couldn't get out. So it began ferociously scratching and clawing at the end of our roof where it use to come and go as it pleased. Two and a half hours later, it was still scratching, a little slower, but still determined. I convinced my husband to open the roof back up and let it out. He did, but saw no squirrel. So he decided to leave the area open for a day until he was sure it was gone and then nail it shut again. For a few days we heard no signs of the squirrel and assumed it had left. Of course that would be too easy.

When I walked past Big Brother's room the one day, I heard the tell-tale scratching noise, only this time it was coming from BB's wall which is on the opposite side of the house from where the squirrel was originally living. So I told my husband, whose name is Bill by the way, and he swore he'd take care of it. That was before we knew we'd be rushing Dare Devil to the hospital.

I had taken DD to the doctors early in the week because he had a very bad cough that wouldn't go away, instead it kept getting worse. DD was diagnosed with asthma last winter before he even turned a year old because of the amount of times he had to be admitted to the hospital for upper respiratory problems. When other kids simply get a cold, DD gets a cold, bronchitis, RSV, croup, pertussis, etc. And on most occasions, he gets more than one virus at a time. It's even harder when BB is bringing different sicknesses home from school. He loves his little brother to death and you'd think that I took away the sun whenever I've asked him to keep his distance from DD. So he is just bound to get sick. The first time we went to the doctors, they sent him for chest x-rays to check for pneumonia, they came out negative so we were told to put him on his nebulizer three times day. Two days later though he could barely breath. The doctor thought it was his asthma acting up and told us to get him to the hospital. So off we went. The doctors there admitted him for over night observation and took x-rays. They told us he had croup and gave him a steroid that was supposed to "work wonders". That was Thursday night to Friday morning. By Saturday I saw no difference, in fact, he seemed to get worse still. He wasn't sleeping, he was barely eating and he was coughing so bad his lips would turn blue. So Saturday night, Bill went up to check on him after he fell asleep and walked in as DD started coughing. Bill yelled for me and I could hear how bad the cough was and the fact that there was no air going back into DD's lungs. DD turned blue so I ran into the bathroom and started to run the hot water in the tub in the hopes of getting steam to open his airway. (This had been recommended by the hospital for when he was having trouble breathing.) The steam was taking too long and DD still wasn't breathing so Bill ran outside into the cold with him. (Also recommended by the hospital). While he was outside I called 911 in hysterics telling them that my baby had turned blue. They said an ambulance was on its way. As soon as I hung up, DD was throwing up and crying which was a good sign. There was finally some air going into his lungs. So I started thinking about what I had to grab for the hospital before the ambulance arrived. I heard the tub still running in the bathroom so I threw my sneakers on and ran upstairs to shut it off. I don't know if it was my pajama pants or the doorway itself but I tripped running into the bathroom and slammed my face into the edge of the tub.

I felt myself passing out until the blood began gushing out of my face and onto the floor. I know I've mentioned this before, but I'm not good with blood. That snapped me out of it and I started screaming for Bill. He came running in thinking I was just upset about DD, yelling "He's ok, he's breathing!" I managed to yell "Blood!" He pulled my face back to assess the damage and after saying, "Oh my God!" held a towel to my face. He called across the street to his parents and asked for his dad to come over and help. Both parents came just as the paramedics arrived. Bill met them at the door and explained that, hey, by the way, my wife needs to be taken to the hospital too. So one paramedic looked at me while the other looked at DD. They were calling me Rocky because my eye had swelled pretty bad and there was blood gushing down my face. DD and I wound up riding in the same ambulance to the hospital. My mother-in-law came too, thank God. Not only was I scared for DD but also for myself. The second I heard one of the paramedics mention stitches, I almost lost it. It was a huge help having her there too because her and Bill took turns with me and DD. (We were down the hall from each other.) They wound up doing an ultrasound on me to check the baby and then a CAT scan on my brain and liver to check for internal bleeding. (I was having a lot of pain.) Everything came back alright and the doctor gave me eight stitches above my left eyebrow. (see pictures) The pediatrician came in to talk to me about DD, saying he sounded like he had pertussis but seeing as how he had it last winter, it was unlikely that he would get it again. So he decided that he must have a really bad upper respiratory infection, causing mucous to choke him. I think him turning blue was a little severe to just be caused by mucous, but I'm not a doctor. So we all headed back home at six in the morning. But things don't end there, oh no, of course not.

A Couple Days After The Incident

Day 4
The Day After My Stitches Came Out

Sunday night, after watching the Superbowl, BB headed up to bed. He ran right back out saying there was something weird on his wall. Bill went to inspect and at first didn't realize what it was. I knew though right away before even seeing it that it had to be something caused by that squirrel. Sure enough, the vengeful squirrel living in the wall scratched two holes through BB's bedroom wall. After Bill vacuumed up BB's room, I taped over the holes with packing tape, hoping to temporarily solve the problem. Of course the next day the packing tape was moved away from the holes. So at the suggestion of DD's doctor (who put DD on an antibiotic for ten days for this mucous mess), I stuffed brillo pads in the holes. The brillo pads haven't been moved but I can still hear the squirrel scratching away in there. Oh, and it still doesn't end there.

The other morning while giving BB his breakfast and packing his backpack, I ran the dishwasher like I usually do. Right before Bill left to take him to school, he ran down to the kitchen to find a flood half way across our kitchen floor. "You've got to be kidding me!" He yelled. When I saw the flood, all I could do was laugh. If I didn't laugh, I would have cried. So I ran upstairs and grabbed every towel we own and began laying them out on the floor. Bill left to take BB to school and I decided to switch some laundry over while he was gone. Our laundry room is right off of our kitchen by the way. When I opened the door, I gasped. The entire laundry room was flooded as well. Seriously, what the hell?! So I called Bill and warned him before he came home and saw it himself. Here we are a few minutes later, me with my head wound, morning sickness and both of us having had no sleep for about a week, cleaning up two floods. Turns out that it is our pipes. Like everything else in our house, the people before us rigged the pipes under our yard instead of completely fixing them and now we're going to have to have the entire yard and part of the sidewalk dug up and the pipes completely replaced. Of course we don't have money for that so for the time being, my wonderful brother came over and used a snake to get through the pipes so water can flow.

Let's recap, in one week we had:

• Four trips to the doctor (including one follow-up with my GYN)
• Two trips to the hospital
• One call to 911
• One blue baby
• One head wound
• One major squirrel problem
• Two floods
  

I'm about to build an ark, stick my whole family on there and wait for the major flood. Ever had so much bad luck in one weeks time? We still have to get rid of the squirrel and Tommy still has yet to get better from this antibiotic he's on. At least my stitches came out yesterday and the doctor said he doesn't think I'll have a scar. So that's a little bit of good news. But my God! What is going on???