Laughing til I cried
I can't believe how mentally exhausted I am. The visit with our GI, though productive was so overwhelming. We are still waiting on some test results this week but regardless of those, we will be heading back very soon for Spencer to undergo some more in depth studies.
Have you ever tried to get a stool sample from your kids? I think I have become the master of this. I have been doing it since they were teeny, tiny. It was so much easier back then, wait for a poopy diaper then load it into the speciman jar. Now, they are big, grown ups really. It's much harder convincing a 14 and 18 year old of how important invading their privacy is.
We left our 4 hour visit with two 'hats' for the toilet, two speciman jars and two popsicle sticks. Are you feeling grossed out yet? You know what needs to happen next but consider this, we are nowhere near a private bathroom and I have two kids who need to make a 'deposit'. Thankfully, they were in a jovial mood and could joke about the testing. The jokes were fine but didn't make it any easier to collect.
I took them to eat the greasiest, fattiest lunch I could find and didn't give them their pancreatic enzymes. This would ensure a speedy end to the inevitable. I then drove straight back to the hospital where we stalked out a bathroom that was the most out of the way from the general population. We sat outside the door...and sat...and sat.
"C'mon guys, give it up, go get this over with....PUHLEASE??? I know you have to go."
"You can't make me. I'm not going to give it up without a fight." said Spencer with a sheepish grin.
"Ya, you do it yourself." chimed Sam.
It was just a comedy routine from these two over the speciman deposit. Shelbie and I were in stitches most of the time. I realized that we deal with stressful situations with laughter. We don't even laugh about funny things. Most of the time, it's dumb but we are all red-faced and trying to catch our breath from laughing so hard. I'm sure we look like idiots and that might explain why people were staring at us. Even when I went to drop the specimans off at the lab, I busted up laughing when I handed the still warm jars to the receptionist. Then, she made me write their names on them! I tried so hard to keep a straight face and act like the 40 something year old that I am instead of a 12 year old. It didn't help that my kids were hiding around the corner laughing at me and snorting and making funny jokes. It was a disaster.
We finally got on the road to come home late in the afternoon. The kids were all quiet, playing games, listening to music and I started in with the most hysterical laughing. I don't even know what I was laughing at!! The kids were looking at me dumbfounded and then all at once, the laughing turned to hysterical crying! I couldn't contain the crying either. It was the weirdest thing I have experienced. I felt this huge break of emotion that seems to have been damned up for months, maybe even years.
The rest of the week I seemed to have a hard time containing my emotions. I found myself wanting to laugh at the most inappropriate times, maybe because the amount of crying I would have done would have been over the top. I don't know what is happening to me, some kind of crazy I guess. I think you can only handle so much stress...
Have you ever tried to get a stool sample from your kids? I think I have become the master of this. I have been doing it since they were teeny, tiny. It was so much easier back then, wait for a poopy diaper then load it into the speciman jar. Now, they are big, grown ups really. It's much harder convincing a 14 and 18 year old of how important invading their privacy is.
We left our 4 hour visit with two 'hats' for the toilet, two speciman jars and two popsicle sticks. Are you feeling grossed out yet? You know what needs to happen next but consider this, we are nowhere near a private bathroom and I have two kids who need to make a 'deposit'. Thankfully, they were in a jovial mood and could joke about the testing. The jokes were fine but didn't make it any easier to collect.
I took them to eat the greasiest, fattiest lunch I could find and didn't give them their pancreatic enzymes. This would ensure a speedy end to the inevitable. I then drove straight back to the hospital where we stalked out a bathroom that was the most out of the way from the general population. We sat outside the door...and sat...and sat.
"C'mon guys, give it up, go get this over with....PUHLEASE??? I know you have to go."
"You can't make me. I'm not going to give it up without a fight." said Spencer with a sheepish grin.
"Ya, you do it yourself." chimed Sam.
It was just a comedy routine from these two over the speciman deposit. Shelbie and I were in stitches most of the time. I realized that we deal with stressful situations with laughter. We don't even laugh about funny things. Most of the time, it's dumb but we are all red-faced and trying to catch our breath from laughing so hard. I'm sure we look like idiots and that might explain why people were staring at us. Even when I went to drop the specimans off at the lab, I busted up laughing when I handed the still warm jars to the receptionist. Then, she made me write their names on them! I tried so hard to keep a straight face and act like the 40 something year old that I am instead of a 12 year old. It didn't help that my kids were hiding around the corner laughing at me and snorting and making funny jokes. It was a disaster.
We finally got on the road to come home late in the afternoon. The kids were all quiet, playing games, listening to music and I started in with the most hysterical laughing. I don't even know what I was laughing at!! The kids were looking at me dumbfounded and then all at once, the laughing turned to hysterical crying! I couldn't contain the crying either. It was the weirdest thing I have experienced. I felt this huge break of emotion that seems to have been damned up for months, maybe even years.
The rest of the week I seemed to have a hard time containing my emotions. I found myself wanting to laugh at the most inappropriate times, maybe because the amount of crying I would have done would have been over the top. I don't know what is happening to me, some kind of crazy I guess. I think you can only handle so much stress...
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