Not Always Happy

by Kari Wagner-Peck

  The doctor’s face turned blotchy red. He told me to pick up the referral from the receptionist then he left the room.

  “He’s a jerk,” I muttered in disgust.

  Thorin nodded yes.

  We had countless appointments with other specialists for various conditions and symptoms: a nutritionist, a geneticist, an eye doctor, a urologist, and the worst dentist, ever. Thorin had come to us with bad teeth. He had three root canals, and two of his teeth had been capped in silver while with Sherry. His front two teeth were deteriorating. I took him for a cleaning, and the hygienist went at his teeth manically. Thorin was lying on his back with his eyes shut tightly.

  “Can you be more gentle, please. Those teeth are so fragile.”

  “I have to do this.”

  I laughed at the absurdity of her answer.

  “You don’t have to do it that hard.”

  After she finished, the dentist came in, examined Thorin’s teeth, and sent us home. The next morning, Thorin walked into the kitchen, smiling at me. I saw both front teeth had broken off during the night. All that remained were little jagged stubs. I silently congratulated myself on not screaming. Ward and I were both concerned he could cut the inside of his mouth, so I called the answering service for the dentist.

  “That happened sooner than we thought,” the dentist said when he called back.

  I ignored his blasé attitude.

  “Okay, but it’s still concerning even if it was anticipated by you.”

  “What do you want me to do, it’s Saturday?”

  “I want you to meet us at your office this morning.”

  I heard an exaggerated sigh from the dentist.

  “I’ll see you in forty-five minutes.”

  At the clinic, he assured us Thorin would not cut his mouth. Then, I followed up on the comment he made during our phone call.

  “If you knew this was going to happen, why didn’t you recommend pulling the teeth yesterday?”

  “Pulling teeth can be traumatizing for a three-year-old,” he said authoritatively.

  How could he possibly think having Thorin’s teeth break off during the night would be less traumatizing? There was no further discussion or apology; the dentist quickly scheduled an appointment for that Monday to pull what remained of Thorin’s teeth and sent us home.

  Before we went back to the dentist, two days later, I told Thorin, “We’re going to the dentist. He’ll give you a shot that might sting for a second. It will make your mouth numb so it won’t hurt when he pulls out your teeth. We can go to Target after, and you can pick out a toy.”

  Thorin nodded. I asked if he had questions. He shook his head no. This procedure must have seemed like small potatoes to him after having dental surgery in the hospital.

  When we walked into the small bay, the dentist was waiting. Thorin pointed to the screen on the ceiling above the examination chair and said “on” as he signed “please.” The hygienist had him make a selection. He chose SpongeBob and settled in the chair to watch. I proudly told the doctor how I prepared Thorin for the procedure.

  “You told him I was going to hurt him?” He sounded wounded.

  “No. I said the shot might sting,” in an upbeat way.

  “Why, why? Now he’s going to hate me!”

  That seemed like a dramatic response, even to me. Thorin looked up for a second and went back to SpongeBob.

  “Oh, he won’t hate you,” I said reassuringly. “So the shot won’t sting?” I said, asking for clarification.

  “Stop saying that!”

  Thorin looked up at me. I shrugged my shoulders. It took everything not to cross my eyes.

  “Okay, sorry, maybe we should just get going,” I said soothingly.

  “I’m the dentist! I say when!” By now, he sounded a little hysterical.

  I wanted to say, “Good grief, man, pull it together!” But I feared I would make him cry. When he was ready, he turned to Thorin and began.

  “I’m putting some magic sauce on your gums.”

  Thorin looked at me with a wrinkled brow. As he injected the shot of Novocain, Thorin did buck a little in the chair.

  The dentist shot me a dirty look. “That’s your doing!”

  After he pulled the second tooth, Thorin sat up, made the sign for “done,” and started to get out of the chair.

  “I’ll tell you when to get out the chair, young man,” admonished the dentist.

  The dentist soon left, and the hygienist cleaned up Thorin. We left and, as promised, headed to Target. In the car, I told Thorin he looked like a really cool vampire, which made him happy.

  When Ward got home that evening, I told him we needed a new dentist.

  “Okay, so we’re up to three professionals you want to axe, is that right? The doctor, maybe the speech therapist, and now the dentist.”

  “I think that’s right.”

  “How about the dentist first and wait on the others? People say ignorant things. I agree we can’t overlook the whole broken teeth, high-strung dentist situation.”

  “The other two are on thin ice, though.”

  “Fine,” he said patting my shoulder.

  Parenting is about discovery. I discovered I loved picking out clothes for Thorin. I loved putting together outfits for him that made a statement. I knew this was going to be a short-term passion, and Thorin would develop his own style at some point.

  I realized I was obsessed with his look the day I dressed him in blue jeans, a yellow, cotton, long-sleeve shirt untucked under a blue vest that had black, blue, and mustard stripes across the chest. The look that day was 1966 British schoolboy. Thorin’s hair was long and shaggy, very Brian Jones, the original founder of The Rolling Stones. When I picked him up from school, his yellow shirt was tucked in. How had that happened? Whoever tucked in his shirt had no sense of style.

  Once we got in the car, I asked, “Thorin, who tucked in your shirt?

  Thorin shook his head no.

  “Is that hard to explain to me?”

  “Yesith.”

  “Thorin, this is very important. If anyone tries to tuck in your shirt next time you wear this outfit, I want you to untuck it. Be polite but make it clear you want it out. Okay?”

  He gave me a thumbs-up. The next time I dressed him in that outfit, he stood up and pulled hard on the bottom of the shirt, smiling.

  I even had fans of my stylist abilities. I ran into a friend who told me her daughter was interning at a preschool. The daughter was taken with a little boy there who wore great outfits. In fact, she had a nickname for him: College Boy.

  “It’s Thorin!” I yelled.

  She laughed, “It is Thorin!”

  Ward would often offer to dress Thorin. I couldn’t risk having him put together an outfit I would find unsuitable but I didn’t want to be insulting about it.

  “Oh, thank you. I already laid clothes out if you want to use those!”

  It took months before Ward caught on.

  “It’s almost like you don’t trust me to dress him.”

  Laughing, I said, “Well that’s a weird thing to think.”

  Thorin’s aide at school was named Mindy. She looked to be in her early forties. Her personality was exuberant with a touch of manic. She stood five-feet tall, had washboard abs, ropy arms like Madonna, and shiny, straight hair. I felt like a big clod next to her. At the end of the first day with Thorin, she told me she loved him. It was clearly level jumping but it was also clear he felt the same way about her.

  Mindy became devoted to Thorin. She took time to quiz his physical therapist, occupational therapist, and speech therapist about what more she could do to help him. I found out from Mindy that she worked a second job, was raising a teenager, and helped raise her grandchild. Yet in her spare time, which must have been while she was going to the bathroom, she taught herself some signing to better communicate with Thorin.

  Her only shortcoming seemed to be that she went a little overboard sometimes. When I would pick up Thorin
at the end of the day, she would fawn over him, hugging and kissing him.

  “I love you, Thorin! I love you so much! I’ll miss you!”

  I wanted to shout, “Sweet Jesus, Mindy, stop!”

  I didn’t want to risk alienating her, but her routine was making it difficult to get Thorin to leave with me. After a week of it, I took her aside.

  “Listen, Mindy, my job is to drop off Thorin and act like it’s no biggie. Your job is to do the same at the end of the day. No biggie. Do you understand?”

  “I just really love him!” she said.

  “Mindy, I get that. He loves you, too, but you’re acting like you’re sending him off to war. The thing is, Mindy, you’re sending him home with me—his mother.”

  “Oh, no! I’m so sorry!” She looked like she was going to cry.

  “Mindy, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to . . .” I trailed off.

  I had a complicated relationship with Mindy. Thorin was still not calling me Mom, and he was clearly in love with her. I was jealous of Mindy. I had to remind myself we were lucky to have her. I also knew that if Thorin were on a field trip, singing to the elderly at a nursing home and a grizzly bear broke into the building, Mindy would kick his ass seven ways to Sunday before he got to Thorin.

  Thorin’s preschool used a model of childcare that accentuated the positive. They believed so strongly in their methodology that they proselytized their message daily. For example, I was encouraged to say, “Use your quiet feet” instead of “Stop running!” I would never say to anyone, “Use your quiet feet,” so why would I talk to Thorin like that? It was also recommended I ignore it when Thorin threw things. I didn’t think the teacher knew what we were up against at home.

  “You know that scene in the movie Carrie,” I began telling her, “when she makes all that cutlery fly around the kitchen? That’s every room in our house—except replace the cutlery with toy cars, shoes, cups, dishes, eyeglasses, remote controls, books, and almost a mini-dachshund.”

  She gave me a sympathetic smile. “That’s because you aren’t ignoring it.”

  Of course she would say that. Then I wondered, What is the positive directive of “Don’t throw Coco?”

  I thought the preschool’s intentions were good but I didn’t want to hear what I should be doing. I was Thorin’s mother even if he didn’t acknowledge it.

  As the weather changed, so did Thorin’s health. The middle of the night trips around the neighborhood in the car and visits to the emergency room began once more. Seeing Thorin helpless was punishing. Dr. Not-McDreamy, as I came to refer to his pediatrician privately, prescribed a nebulizer to use at home.

  As he gave me the compact machine and a box of ampules filled with albuterol, I asked, “Maybe he has asthma?”

  “He doesn’t,” he said authoritatively.

  A couple weeks after I brought home the nebulizer, Thorin woke us in the middle of the night. He was making the dreaded stridor sound. As I ran to his crib, I had the mental image of him trying to breathe through a straw.

  “I’ll set up the nebulizer,” I told Ward.

  Ward lifted him from the crib and carried him into our room. Walt followed them to our bed, curling up against Thorin as he lay propped up on the pillows. I went to put the little mask over Thorin’s face. He pushed my hands away. He was still making the shrieking sound then he started gasping for air. I saw the panic in Thorin’s eyes. Ward picked him up and starting pacing. Thorin’s back was arching. He started banging his head with his fists. Then he was clawing at his throat.

  “We have to call an ambulance,” I said as calmly as possible.

  “No, it can’t be that bad,” said Ward. “Maybe we should wait.”

  I grabbed my phone and called 911. The dispatcher answered.

  “I don’t know if our son can breathe.” I could hear my voice breaking and felt my heart pounding in my ears.

  With her assistance, I was able to give her all the information to send help. The three of us went to sit on the front steps. The hospital was less than a five-minute drive from our apartment. We focused on keeping Thorin calm, talking in soothing tones. Ward gently held his thrashing body.

  I hoped the cold outside would open his airways. When I saw no change, I started silently pleading to God. Once the ambulance arrived, the paramedics moved quickly. They brought oxygen to the porch.

  “Shouldn’t he go in there?” I said pointing to the ambulance.

  They gave a quick look to each other. “We need to do as much as we can here,” one of the paramedics said.

  In my head, I just kept saying please over and over again. One paramedic went to the ambulance to make a call to the hospital. The other one tried giving oxygen to Thorin, but he was fighting him, shaking his head and pushing away the paramedic’s hands.

  “Hey, Dad, you gotta hold him still!” he said to Ward.

  When the other guy came back, he was still talking to the hospital. In conferring with the person on the other end of the line, it was decided they give Thorin a shot.

  Suddenly, I was looking down on the scene from above. I could see Thorin struggling; Ward and I stricken with fear; the paramedics busy with the details of administering aid; and the ambulance with flashing lights. Just as suddenly, I was jerked back in my body.

  It was clear the paramedics were looking for a specific response from Thorin. When it didn’t come, and after conferring again with the hospital, one paramedic told us it was time to move. Ward, carrying Thorin, jumped into the back of the ambulance with the guy on the phone. I got in the front seat with the driver. He didn’t look at me. He also didn’t say anything to me, such as “It’s going to be fine” or “Don’t worry.” So, I asked.

  “Is he going to be okay?”

  “How old is he?”

  I looked at the driver’s profile. His arms were rigid, and his hands grasped the wheel tightly. He drove very fast. When we came to a one-way street, he pulled on to the street instead of bypassing it.

  “We don’t want to waste time,” the driver said as we sped down the street.

  If we’d gone the other way it would have been another three blocks, too many in his mind. I gave up hope Thorin would be okay.

  I checked out again—not as an observer above the scene but completely gone. The next thing I remembered was being on a stretcher with Thorin lying on top of me. His chest was against mine. I could feel his breathing was still labored, but his chest wasn’t heaving wildly. He was crying quietly. He reached up and put his hand on my neck, slick with tears. I looked up and saw we were in a room with several people in white coats. A doctor had her hand on Thorin’s back; she stroked his hair. He pulled closer to me.

  “He’s okay, gentlemen,” she said to the paramedics. “He’s going to be okay.”

  “He made a liar of me,” the driver said. “He was coding out! He was!”

  She looked up at him, “Yes, he was. He turned it around though.”

  Even in that moment, I thought it was interesting that she gave credit to Thorin.

  “Okay, most of you can leave. We have it under control, thankfully,” she said.

  A nurse lifted Thorin while I moved from the stretcher. Another nurse put tubes in his nose for oxygen, then she hooked him up to a monitor. Thorin did not fight her. After several minutes, Thorin fell asleep. Ward and I sat next to his bed, holding hands.

  “Did I pass out? Is that why I was on the stretcher?” I asked Ward.

  Ward laughed softly, “What?”

  “I checked out. I don’t remember everything.”

  “You seemed like you were there. When we got out of the ambulance, Thorin reached for you. They told you to get on the stretcher so you could hold him.”

  The staff moved the three of us to a hospital room for the night. Thorin refused to sleep in the oversize crib so we squished together in the single-sized hospital bed. Ward and I turned inward toward Thorin while he slept on his back in the middle. I don’t know if I slept so much as my state of consc
iousness took a break from what could have been.

  I was the first one awake. I opened my eyes. I was still facing Thorin and didn’t want to move. My chest and upper arms were aching from clenching my body the night before. I looked at Ward and Thorin, relieved we made it through the worst of it. Thorin opened his eyes. He turned his body toward mine. He had an impish grin on his face.

  “Hi, Mommy,” he said as he put both hands on either side of my face.

  He said it! I had finally proved my mettle. I also knew him well enough to know if I made mention of it he might never call me that again.

  “Good morning, Sweetheart,” I said. “How are you?”

  “Good, Mom,” he replied. He never again called me Ba.

  After we got home, I called Dr. Not-McDreamy for a referral to a pulmonologist. His nurse called back to tell me he thought my request was completely unnecessary.

  “Will he take responsibility for another emergency room visit?” I asked.

  When she called back twenty-five minutes later, she said he would like to make a referral to a pediatric pulmonologist.

  A week later, I sat in the reception area of the pulmonology clinic with Thorin, filling out questions on the intake forms.

  •How many days of school has your child missed in the last six months?

  •Does your child awake during the night coughing?

  •Does your child awake during the night having difficulty breathing?

  •How many trips to the emergency room in the last six months?

  •How many times did you call an ambulance in the last six months?

  My immediate thought was the doctor was assessing our competency as parents. As the questions continued, I noodled out they were assessing Thorin’s pulmonary health; all were common markers that children with asthma shared. We weren’t awful parents; however, we put too much trust in someone we didn’t respect. The pulmonologist was easy going and personable. Instead of facing a computer screen, he faced us as he wrote on a yellow legal pad, looking up as I spoke. After I described the night we called an ambulance, he nodded and said, “You made the right decision; those situations can go bad quickly.”