Buckets of Snot

October 21, 2008

Walter and I were so aglow over the return of the bonafide Erin on Saturday that we fell asleep at the switch and forgot to give her her claratin and singulair for seasonal allergies that evening. We forgot at the height of fall allergy season. We forgot after Erin spent most of the day tromping around up and down the road and behind the dam and most of the evening sitting by a campfire at Adam's birthday party, roasting marshmallows and letting the smoke drift through her hair (well hair stubs, anyway).

We have paid for it since, with buckets of snot rolling out of her nose (mostly into tissues and to a lesser degree down her throat, which is now raw) and a sinus pressure headache that doesn't give in to much. I guess you'd say our oversight of this situation was akin to Treasury secretary Paulson's oversight of the financial markets. Oops. And this was supposed to be her good, recovered from chemo week, too. Oops.

We have not made a final decision about what treatment to sign up for next, although I think we are leaning towards the pemethexed study.

In the meantime, Erin has made the best of a snotty situation. We went out to watch the Aggie women play soccer Sunday afternoon. Erin ballgirled half the game, and luckily for me (given my lacking oversight abilities these days), she neither got smacked by an errant ball nor flattened by an out-of-control player as she stood on the sideline. We also went to the Brazos Valley Organ Extravaganza Sunday evening, mainly to listen to Nico playing, who received a spontaneous standing O after his piece, as the large crowd probably didn't anticipate how amazing his playing is.

Early voting started Monday here Brazos County, so Erin and I did our civic duty down at the courthouse. A record setting 2049 other folks joined me for first day voting.

Monday then turned into homework day. Besides the usual, Erin is building a Dia de los Muertos altar in memory of Walter's mother, a.k.a. Grammy, for Spanish class. I thought it a bit creepy that Erin was fashioning skulls out of skulpi clay, but she didn't seem to notice the morbidity of it. I pitched in by making a little tea cup and saucer, complete with a lemon on the rim, in memory of the many times I remember her sending her tea back with the waiter or waitress, admonishing them to bring her HOT water, not warm water for her tea. I also made something that you might mistake for Angel food cake, if someone told you ahead of time "Oh, that's supposed to be an angel food cake." Erin did much better, building a diarama of someone swimming and a stack of little books (both beloved hobbies of Grammy).

I'm going to check Erin's counts after school again today, just to make sure that her platelets have recovered and have the pediatrician take a quick peak into Erin's ears just to make sure the standing water between her ears hasn't gotten infected. If you have a direct line to the snot diety, you can call him/her off now. We have had our share and then some.