That's it: I can never have another five year-old birthday in my house.
On Petunia's 5th birthday in 2005, we rushed her to the most God-awful ER in the world in Trenton, NJ because she was blue -- BLUE -- because of a severe asthma attack. (That asthma disappeared totally with our move to California, by the way.) We had given her a doctor's kit for her birthday; she took it to the hospital with her. It would've been cute if it weren't so darned sad.
Fast forward to today, Dash's 5th birthday. In the middle of the night on Sunday/Monday, Dash threw up a few times. We figured it was just excitement over his My Gym party on Sunday morning; he never spiked a fever, and by noon on Monday was eating like a horse. I dutifully kept him home from school on Monday and Tuesday (can't go within 24 hours of vomiting!); and there was no school today, on his birthday... so he had to start throwing up AGAIN. (No school tomorrow -- no break for me!)
This time, it was clearly a stomach bug. The kid vomited until there was nothing left except for his pancreas, as I think his spleen came up moments before. It was that bad... bad enough that I called the nurse because the vomit was day-glo yellow, and I thought for sure that it was the contents of his soul. (His soul would be sunny yellow. I just know.) She had me give him teaspoons of liquid every ten minutes starting half an hour after each booting session, clearly a recipe for disaster from a nurse with a sick sense of humor. He parked himself on my chair -- my sacred chair in my bedroom, the chair on which no child will ever ever ever vomit because it's my chair -- and threw up all day in a bucket, only because I told him what'd happen to him if one drop of vomit touched my chair. (No more birthdays!)
But the saddest thing, the thing that broke my heart, is when he looked into my eyes around 8 am and said, "Mama, I don't want my birthday to be today. I'm too sick. I want to feel good for my birthday. Maybe we can have it tomorrow?"
"We can, but don't you want to open your presents?"
"No, Mama, I can't. I already told you, today is not my birthday."
It did seem like the least I could to was let him vomit a bucket on my chair.
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