Not So Fast Food

I typically share the most current adventures in the Salty Boys lives.  But lately I have been reflective on our family journey and also anticipating what life brings next.  With my reflection, I recall that life has always been a juggling act with these two little guys.  And it is this email that shares what life was all about two years ago and that was a foreshadow of the Two Salty Boys blog.

At that time, our family moved to the east coast for a few months for my husband's job.  We were excited to embark on our new adventure.  It was a great time for bonding, not so great for sleep.  We were living in a two bedroom apartment which did not bode well for a toddler's and a baby' napping and sleeping schedules.  Often, my husband and I would find ourselves either sleeping in bed with Michael or on the couch to avoid Dylan who was in a crib in our bedroom.  Every night we played the complicated game of musical beds in the tiny apartment with no two nights the same.  It was 3 months of patience and flexing that I can't quite explain.  There were times I was really close to cracking...  when it's not quite home, and there are so many emotions, some times it just hard to keep it all together.

I will share one such incident that I had shared via email to a small group of individuals.  It has been edited minimally, just censored for the general public since my original email had some unladylike language in it.  But this the insanity I love and hate.  It is what makes me laugh, cry and collapse into my bed each night.

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TO:  A lucky select few in my life DATE:  09/24/2009 12:52 PM SUBJECT:  Ridiculous Trip to McDonald's

Ok, I am really close to losing my mind.  Short story if anything to help me vent and to give you some comic relief for the day.
 
I was ambitious this morning and looked for that cool park that dad had told me about earlier this week.  I googled it, found the address, loaded the boys in the car, and off we went.  It would have been too long a walk to go there, so I had to drive.
 
The [CENSORED] GPS in the car sucks by the way, always cutting out and saying low power.  Whatever.  We get to the park, Mikey has fun playing, wore a little energy out of him.  Then I promised to hit up a McD’s for a strawberry shake and French fries.  So, I google the McD’s, find the one on East-West nearby and we head in that direction…
 
What is always SUPPOSED to be EASY, well, NEVER IS.  As I pull up, I realize…  unbelievably, there is no drive thru.  REALLY?  A McD’s with NO DRIVE THRU.  I have 2 kids that I have to get OUT OF THE CARSEATS, walk in, hold Dylan just to order and get our food.  Ohhhh, but it doesn’t stop there.  I get them out, get in the door, and start to place the order.  The lady doesn’t totally speak English, needs me to repeat over and over the items we are ordering, Mikey is walking around, Dylan is killing my arm and I am juggling everything.  I ask for BBQ sauce and she explains it is over there and points to a self-serve sauce bar and self-serve fountain soda station.  WTF?!  Really.   A McD’s where you get your own sauces, drinks and they have NO DRIVE THRU.  Where am I?  Mars?
 
Finally, we get our food, as I turn to walk to get the sauce and the drinks, the bag rips with our food in it.  My hand is twitching trying to balance and not lose all the contents all over the floor and my other arm is shaking holding 20 lb. of Mr. Dylan.  I re-gather the ripped bag as best I can and set everything down on the station.  I fill my drink as Michael is demanding a straw…  A nice lady hands him one, which I promptly take from him and open it up.  She was nice enough to hand me one for my drink, which I opened and shoved in the flimsy plastic top to my drink, which I am looking at over and over trying to reseal it.  It doesn’t seem to fit right.  GRRRRREAT.
 
Then I shift to sauces…  I find the BBQ sauce, grab a mini clear cup and try to figure out how to pump it.  I couldn’t just place the cup on the counter and pump with one hand holding Dylan b/c there was sauce all over the counter.  So, I asked a gentleman nearby if he could kindly pump the sauce while I held the cup.  “Sure”.  As he presses the pump he continues to fill it to the very top.  Right then, I just knew I was screwed.  I thanked him and then knew I was never going to get a lid on it…  it was too full.  As I tried to snap a lid tightly onto it, the sauce oozed out all over and the lid wouldn’t close.  Then I had BBQ all over me, all over Dylan and no wet wipes only a dry napkin that I fumbled for to try to wipe it up.  I positioned the sauce in the mangled bag as best I could, balanced by sitting on the spilled French fries, re-gathered the top of the bag in my hand and headed for the freaking door.  As I leave, I am teetering the drink with the wrong lid, delicately holding the ripped bag, hefting heavy Dylan, and trying to make sure that Mikey doesn’t walk into cars in the parking lot.  We make our way out to the car of the most poorly constructed parking lot that I have ever seen, hop in, and then have a landscaping rig trying to maneuver around our car…  F this.  A minute later, the rig is gone, I reverse on the gear shift, then put it in drive.  Ahhh, we are on our way, phew.
 
Just when I thought we were good to go, I hear “OH NO!  My shake!” in the back seat.  And plunk.  Thinking I simply had a retrieve the shake and hand it back to Mikey (possibly a little drip or something), pull into a new spot in the parking lot and get out.  As I fling the door open, I see 2/3 of the oozing pink icecream leaking all over our Infiniti backseat.  No napkins in the car, no towels, nothing to clean it up.  I seriously wiped it up with one burp cloth and 3 handi wipes that I had left.  I had 2 diaper wipes too.  That was it.  It was a disaster.  Dylan started to freak out b/c he was hungry, Mikey then started demanding French fries (b/c of course he would, he is a 2 year old.)  And I just about lost it.
 
I cleaned it up, with some swearing along the way, as best I could.  I can’t wait to hear what comes out of Michael’s mouth later today.  And then I headed home.  Defeated.
 
We might need to give a better clean job tonight, but really?!  A trip to McD’s in sunny Bethesda. [CENSORED] awesome.

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Looking back brings me to looking to now.  Days are still filled with juggling, just a little different.

While living in that small apartment in Bethesda, I very vividly recall 10-month old Dylan's love for opening the non-baby proofed cabinets and explorer.  CONSTANTLY.  I couldn't stop him and tried to keep things in the cabinets and drawers that were at the very least safe, and if lucky, benign in terms of risk to our apartment.

There was one time, very clearly, when I wasn't looking my sweet little Dylan opened an entire gallon of distilled water and poured it all over our very small apartment.  I remember as I hurried around the apartment, my foot went, SPLAT! in cool liquid.  I see the empty bottle discarded on the floor and he is playing in the toy box near the sofa.  The only thing I can thing is, "that thing was SEALED!"  The kitchen and family room were a lake for the afternoon.  Our very own 7th story lake.  I go through countless towels to clean the soppy mess.  Then need to start the laundry that has mounted quickly from our man-made baby-made body of water.  No rest for the weary.

In recent times I still catch Dylan playing with trouble...in the pantry...in the bathroom (gasp!)...in the laundry room...on a high window sill...you name it, with a variety of messy media.  A couple weeks ago I found that he had stabbed a pen into every apple in a bowl on the counter.  Or he had colored all over himself (belly, armpits, face, you name it) with markers.  And not the Crayola washable kind.  He would have three days of the pink, green and brown tattoos all over his body.

One particular time not to long ago, I noticed Dylan playing in the pantry and I try to redirect his attention to a toy in the other room.. I walk away, I just know he has continued his exploration of the pantry again, even after my deterring him.  Then, I hear his little sweet voice exclaim, "oh no!" and he runs over to me and hands me the cap he has broken off of the gallon of white vinegar jug sitting in the floor of our pantry.  He toddles over and raises his little, delicate hand to give me the lid.  I see the distress and confusion written across his face.  I seize in fear of the stinky vinegar lake I am about to encounter.

I peer in the floor of the pantry and to my surprise I see the massive container of vinegar still standing upright.  Crisis averted.  Well, at least this go around it is not all over my floor.  I guess things are in fact getting easier one day at a time...

That McDonald's trip was burned in my brain as "not-so-fast" food for obvious reasons.  I know some day, I will blink and it will have all gone by...too fast.  Maybe "fast food" is not really what I needed anyway.

Salty and Sweet.

Autumn air and sunshine fill my afternoons driving Michael and Dylan to Michael's preschool most days of the week.  We talk about the pretty landscape and play games calling out "Leaf!" when we see a leaf drifting to the ground.  I just love hearing Dylan say to me, "Wook, the weaves are dancing, Mommy.  Dey are dancing," pointing to the leaves blowing along the street from a breeze and passing cars.

We have more nature in two weeks than one can really take in.  A flock of wild turkeys crosses a busy road near our neighborhood.  I literally have to slow the car because two of them are starting to cross but decide to draw back and continue to reside on someone's front yard.  We would see the same flock a week or so later.  A massive, neon green grasshopper greets me on the windshield of my car.  We spot an inching gray and black caterpillar trying to find a home near our patio.  The boys play caterpillars for days after this sighting.

And deer.  Oh the deer.  They are in our front yard, our neighbor's yard, they are crossing the busy street to Michael's school.  They are eating.  They are staring.  They are everywhere.  I am still stunned when I drive down our neighborhood street and see six of them hanging out.  Ahh, nature all around us.  Funny how nature is at the very root of everything.

Even more routine than our wild life sightings around suburban New Jersey are the busy morning Cystic Fibrosis treatments that jump start our days. Around 7 am, I rev the boys' machines up and the unmistakable thrum of the orchestra begins.   The decibel level has skyrocketed since the arrival of Michael's new nebulizer compressor.  It is hospital grade and it is a bad-ass machine.  His other compressors just couldn't survive with the demands of daily treatments.  The increased volume in our home has become typical and the boys have learned to accept watching TV on volume 100, no joke.  I, too, have had to accept it.

I fumble around awkwardly brewing a cup of Keurig coffee in the kitchen while the ear-deafening sounds of Nick Jr. throttle the family room .  Now, this machine was made for me, I am certain.  My Keurig is simple, it is brainless, it makes a great cup of coffee.  And it is QUIET.

I say a morning prayer for my gratitude for my boys' health, the machines and the meds that keep them that way.  As I sip my steaming hot cup of coffee, I peer into the family room where the boys are shaking from their vest airway clearance treatments and their nebulizers are steaming away.  This morning's prayer is for the medicine misting through Dylan's mask and Michael's mouthpiece at this moment.  And it is not what you might expect.  It is simply salt water.

Something so basic.  So earthly, it's ridiculous.  No super crazy science (well, I am sure there was some that went into it), but no chemical compounds or medicinal discovery...  salt water.

Isak Dinesen, a literary legend, once wrote,

"The cure for everything is salt water -- sweat, tears, or the sea."

In the case of Cystic Fibrosis, I am convinced this quote couldn't be more true.

The sterile salt water is the hydration that their little lungs so need.  Because Cystic Fibrosis interferes with the fine balance of salt and water in the body, the boys' lungs, intestines, pancreas, and sinuses, and other "tubes" of the body become dry.  Fluids that normally flow through these areas of the body are replaced with dryness and a sludge that clogs the organs and passageways in the body.

So I have heard, this special salt water called "Hypertonic Saline" was discovered by a pulmonologist in Australia.  Whether it is truth or myth, the story goes that he began to notice that a subset of his patients were markedly healthier than his others.  And when he began to do some digging on the underlying reason why he realized that that those patients that were surfers tended to have better lung health.  The theory was that the natural conditions of the salt water from the ocean in combination with the cardio activity helped those patients with better lung hydration and better clearance in their airways of those sluggish secretions that form.  Supposedly, he began to wonder since there was noticeably better lung health for his surfing patients going into the ocean, was there a way to bring the benefits of the ocean to patients?

I set my coffee mug down and continue to watch the steam swirling out of the holes in Dylan's mask and Michael's mouthpiece valve.  Salt water.

I believe that this drug, Hypertonic Saline, which the boys breathe in twice a day for about 20 minutes is incredible.  I really am banking on this drug in the worst of the cold season this year.  I feel good knowing that both boys are treated with it every day.

Imagine needing to clean your kitchen and having a damp sponge...  the cleaning possibilities are endless!  There is so much a wet sponge can tackle.  But take a dry sponge, hard and almost rigid.  It is scratchy and menacing, certainly not pleasant and in no way up for the cleaning task.

Now imagine the value of adding just a little water to one side of the sponge... what happens?  The sponge will continue to soak the water up drawing it further and further in, practically seeking more water.  Saturate the entire sponge and what next?  You can wring out the water after cleaning with the sponge easily and disposing of the yuk water you no longer need.  This is basically how I envision Hypertonic Saline to work and I believe there is immense value in it's daily treatment for the boys.

Their lungs soak up the salt water up because they need it.  And once their are hydrated that can more easily "wring" out their lungs and dispose of the sludge and yuk stuff that is hanging out in their airways.

I am startled out of my daze while picturing just how this medicine is getting down into their lungs.  Dylan is yelling over the machines, over the TV and through his mask that his mask is "Swippin".  Translation his mask is falling off, it is slipping.  I dart into the other room to help him.  And so our day begins.

By bedtime, everyone is exhausted after our post-school treatments, dinner, bath, books and bed.  There are so many parents who feel my exhaustion right along with me.  By 6 pm you are just ready to pass out.  On this night both boys are in their beds by 7:30 and the house is silent for some time.  They are tucked in and I believe have fallen to sleep.  My husband is still at work, so I decide to take a minute on the couch to catch the days headlines on the news.

I jump when I hear Dylan begin whining loudly and I head up to his room.  I can't get up to his room fast enough.  He says loudly in his deep toddler voice, "Mommy, you didn't come, I called you and you didn't come.  I scared somebody take me."  He is anxious and unsettled.  I help him back into his wee toddler bed, and he scrunches down under his covers.

He is so tired as he is blinking his eyes close.  I think for a moment he is playing a joke since his blinking is so exaggerated.  I gently stroke his hand and he quietly smacks his mouth and opens his eyes wearily at me.  He pats my hand closes his eyes.  He whispers something inaudible and pushes my hand.  "What, Dylan?" I gently ask.  He is almost an actor out of a Hollywood drama.  My little boy whispers, with his eyes still closed, "Go, Mom."  He is nearly asleep and restful.  I am in awe.  He needed one last comfort from me and was ready to drift off in slumber.  The drama of his performance is almost Oscar worthy. 

I exit the brief scene, which I plan to submit to the Academy first thing in the morning and I head downstairs to brew another cup of coffee.  Exhausted and pondering what next as I wait for the speedy brew to finish.  Easy answer.  I pop a sea salt caramel in my mouth.  I chew it slowly enjoying the salty bite and the contrasting sugary sweetness.  The punch of the salty crunch curbs the gooey chocolate caramel.  I love these.  These are a bite of therapy.

I feel the corners of my mouth curl up and I fight the grin that emerges.

Sea.

Salt.

Caramel.

Guess that vast ocean really can be the cure for everything.