Hives
My son has hives. Again. The first time he got them he was 3 months old, and while I kept calm on the outside, I was freaking out on the inside. I am now freaking out again. Moms do this—and Dads let them as a method of self-preservation. Thing is, with all we went through with Claire’s prematurity and her health issues, I didn’t freak out nearly as much. This hits home for me as an allergy sufferer. I only remember getting what I think of as hives once in my life.
So now we’re methodically trying to figure out why they keep reoccurring. I thought I nailed it, and then today he got a bout when we had totally avoided what I thought (feared) it was. So now we’re avoiding cheese, which is a natural histamine provider anyway and could be an allergen or a way to exacerbate the histamine levels in his body. I am itchy just when I look at his torso, and I look at his torso, about every five minutes, to see if there’s any change. Tonight Claire said, before bed, “Mommy, I want to kiss all his little bumps in the morning to make them better.” I told her that’s really nice, but we hope the bumps are all gone in the morning.
In true parental fashion, I don’t want my kids to suffer what I’ve had to suffer in life—in this case, allergies. I’ve never been allergic to food—that’s my brother’s job—but I got the short end of the stick with the allergy-induced asthma. There are a few things in this world that have scared the daylights out of me, and not being able to breathe is one of them. I remember the scariest night, waking up in my navy blue nightgown with the anchor on it (as if I were pretend Navy), feeling like I was trying to fill my lungs through a straw. I went to my aunt, woke her up, and did what she told me: I opened the windows to let in all the cold air, and sat in the rocking chair. I was freezing, and freaking out. She told me to calm down and breathe as best I could until the albuterol started working. After a while, when it didn’t work that well, we went to the hospital, where they gave me a nebulizer treatment. I threw up a lot. They finally admitted me and said I had “asthmatic bronchitis.” The city I grew up in was pretty small but had a small-ish hospital, and they ended up opening the pediatric ward for me and this other little girl. I forget what was wrong with her. I remember feeling special that they did that just for us. I think maybe they wanted to keep us away from the rest of the hospital population, which was full of old people. I was 13; it was the last week of October, and I was missing the last possible Halloween for me to get away with trick or treating. I got nebbed 3 times a day, and after each time, a woman came in to bang on my back to loosen all that stuff in my lungs. I ate a lot of grilled cheese sandwiches. My friends came to visit me, and I watched a lot of “Inspector Gadget.” The hospital stay was nothing—but that night, sitting in the big rocking chair, trying to breathe through a straw—that was terrifying.
So I ask Sam if his throat itches, and I listen to him breathe.
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I’m also trying to gear up for August Poem-A-Day. In past years I’ve done September instead, because Augusts have just been too busy. This year, August doesn’t seem so bad. So I’m going to give it a whirl. There are more poets doing it in August, so maybe I’ll have a sense of camaraderie in an otherwise isolating activity. I just downloaded the Poetry Foundation app and the Poetry Daily app for my iPhone.
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Work…. is. I’ll leave it at that. Of course, there’s always a silver lining.