Thirteen Months

Last summer for his 5th birthday, G wished he could be six when he blew out the candles. His wish is getting closer to coming true as kindergarten is a mere week-and-a-half from being over. Next thing I know, we'll be planning the big '0-6' party.

Kindergarten being what it is, a cesspool of disease smeared by dirty little hands, snotty noses and un-guarded sneezes that, amazingly, can cross a room at remarkable speed for coming out of such small barrels, has had it's moments where I thought this year would never end.

I've been anxious for the last year to end too. There has been some disagreement as to what makes a year in our house. A: January - December , or B: 12 continuous months . I choose B because it can start from any chosen moment and life is too short to wait 8 months to start trying to get out of a bad groove simply because of a twelve pack of numbered pages hanging on the fridge. We've been close in years past, but every year something goes wrong and somebody breaks something or somebody has a surgery that turns into two or three more to fix whatever went wrong in the first one..

So this year, the one where the Newmaforma manages 12 months free of hospital stays, surgeries, screws, pins, casts or sedation finally happened a few weeks ago. Our first Hospital free year since September of '06. I wanted to celebrate but...black cats, walking under latters and all, kept me more cautious than joyful.

The party balloons popped sooner than later. A kid at school gets sick, then 5. A week later half the grade school is absent and a note comes from the principal explaining that Parvovirus is not just for dogs. Further research reveals that Parvo in humans, Parvovirus B19, is commonly called Fifths disease and is normal for kids to get and less so for adults. If a K9 and kid virus is rare for adults, A is certain to take it to a new level.

Words like 'rare', 'uncommon',' unique' are peppered throughout A's medical history. Of course the recent pricks, swabs and prods have left the local medical community scratching their heads. This shit is off the hook. A called one of her specialists who led her back to the E.R. Now her throat's so swollen and painful she's spitting saliva out into a coffee mug instead of swallowing it. She can't talk so she texts me like a teen-age girl. The fever is unrelenting and she only sleeps in fits every few hours day or night.  This virus she's hosting only fed itself on little kids as an appetizer and has turned to A to show its monster-self for the real meal.

Maybe we've moved on from invasive treatments, but the girl raised in Africa is getting her ass kicked by domestic kindergarten germs.