And the Fifth Horseman was called Kaos

11-05-2018

Before anybody goes throwing The Book of Revelations at me, that's a reference to a Terry Pratchett story in the title.

The ladyfriend suggested that I post this rant, purely because we were laughing at a string of bad luck we've had recently. This isn't to say that what is about to be told is THE ABSOLUTE WORST THING TO EVER HAPPEN...but you can see how all the tiny bits one after another might make people see pink elephants drinking tea from china cups.

The conversation started because we are, once again, in the midst of a house of illness and sickness. I am starting to think there is a ghost in the attic who sneaks out at night and infects us all while we sleep. As we handled yet another four-way immune system assault, the ladyfriend said: Nobody would believe all the crap that's gone on the last eleven weeks.

Eleven. Weeks. We aren't even talking a full season here, just the last eleven weeks.

Travel back in time, using words, to when Jellybean was born. A fairly standard birth, with the emergency C-section being an obvious hiccup.

But then you add in that the ladyfriend was bleeding out on the table because of complications and we start the first of our little hiccups.

Next up, her recovery. Owing largely to the complications mentioned just there, the ladyfriend picked up an infection. Meaning she had to spend more time than normal in the hospital before we could get herself and Jellybean home.

Once home, everything should be plain sailing, right? Not so. Jellybean, after his first few days on the Earth, reveals to us, in ear-shattering ways, that he has colic. Colic! Meaning you spend about 12 hours a night passing the floor trying to calm him down enough so he will sleep for five seconds, all the while not trying to kill anything and everything else in the world that makes the smallest bit of noise.

Hiccup number three.

Except as you are trying not to kill things you find out that Nugget, now a big sister, has a cold. Worse, when she gets a cold her ongoing lung problem means she coughs like she is trying to evict the lung from her body. This goes on for hours at a time during the night. Now we are in the delicate dance of getting Jellybean over only for Nugget to wake up screaming for help. Just as we help her out he wakes again.

The pink elephants are multiplying.

Next up, Jellybean's skull is slightly misaligned on his neck. This causes him incredible pain. Using all the communication skills a three week old has at their disposal he screams for hours on end.

Luckily the ladyfriend finds a solution for this and a few trips out to Mullingar gets his head aligned correctly. I won't count that on the overall hiccups, but it still happened.

Moving along, we have the head aligned and a snow storm hits. No big deal, this is Ireland. The weather is crazy. The annoying bit isn't that shops run out of bread (seriously how much toast is needed during a snow storm) but that the water goes. As in, completely. Now we have a very smelly house and worse still the ladyfriend is at risk of infection because she needs to shower daily until her wound heals. As it turns out, our next visit to the hospital for a check-up reveals just that. She hasn't healed correctly, a minor infection has appeared and her bloods are not looking great.

Hiccup four and five people.

Along comes Jellybean's next parental surprise: he has extremely bad reflux. All babies, to some degree, have reflux but according to the doctor Jellybean is so bad he needs a special medicine.

Otherwise he screams after eating, then gets sick, then screams because he is hungry.

The pink elephants have now invited over some blue kangaroos for dinner.

Things were quiet then for a few days. I think Jellybean reached five weeks before he got conjunctivitis. All because his loving big sister, with dirty hands, thought poking him in the eye one day would be fun.

Hiccup seven: a baby with conjunctivitis is a scream (see what I did there ).

Now we move into the fun stuff. Nugget gets chickenpox. Not a bad dose, not exactly a mild dose, but Nugget is gunning to be the youngest person ever to win an Oscar for overacting when sick. When she is sick you KNOW she is sick because she will not stop screaming/crying/seeking attention. I had to stop mid shit one day to sort her out because the ladyfriend was hip deep in Jellybean shit

Hiccup number eight.

Now I know the next bit will garner now sympathy for me, and rightly so, but during the Chickenpox situation I had a level 2 manflu. The bad part of this is that it some transferred to the ladyfriend, who got level 4 manflu. We will only count her one.

Hiccup nine.

So we got over that whole thing, Jellybean thankfully coming out without chickenpox because that would have been a riot. Then, just because it would be fun, Nugget's chest thing flared up. Meaning she is now on a double dose of her inhalers for the next few weeks.

Hiccup ten.

We are now at week seven of Jellybean being in the world.

Weeks eight and nine were more or less alright. Nothing too crazy, except when we got to the weekend of week nine. That's when Nugget decided to catch strep-throat. Let me tell you I nearly marched down to the creche to find who she had been kissing! Anyway that weekend was a pukey Nugget, a moaning Nugget, and an out of hours trip to a doctor to get her antibiotics.

Which was when we learn not only has she strep-throat but has also hand-foot-and-mouth. Apparently it was the tail end of it, but it was still there.

Hiccups eleven and twelve for those keeping count. I'm not even sure the pink elephants are sticking around at this stage. You couldn't make this stuff up.

To add to the fun Jellybean caught a cold, bad, and so did the ladyfriend. I appeared to be alright, but Nugget was really sick.

Of course her chest thing, being always there, saw that her immune system was busy fighting something else and out comes THE CROUPE! Now we are back in the land of her coughing all night, Jellybean waking and crying, Nugget waking and coughing and crying and the ladyfriend getting about three hours of sleep over two days as we alternate who looks after which terror child.

Hiccup fourteen!

Today, as I type this, I've a cold. But again, we won't count that. However the ladyfriend has just been down to the doc and it turns out she also has a chest infection and needs some meds.

Hiccup fifteen, hot off that presses!

As I said at the start of this rambling rant, there are people out there that go through worse. But when you are in the micro-scale view of just your little part of the world you have to wonder: What the hell did a young family do to get all that bad luck in a three month window.

I must have pissed on a Gypsy gravesite or something.

Let me tell you this though, if it wasn't for the ladyfriend being my anchor in this I would have "gone out for a packet of smokes" . When we were in the height of each Hiccup she would pull marital rank and say what was to be done so that both of us got minor respites during the madness.

My guess is the next event to happen from the kids health will involve an alien bacteria and a xenomorph.

Blue_jester