The life and times of an irrational father. One man, multiple personalities.
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I Think the Window was Fogged Up

April 15th, 2009 | Posted by Joe in flat earth | irrational dad | pain | sick Tyler | sleepless nights | surgery - (5 Comments)


After Tyler’s nine month checkup last week, Sarah called me and filled me in on how it went down. I then proceeded to do some research over at Google on otoscopes, otitis media, and ear infections. After reading for around two hours, I wrote a post about the appointment and the concerns that came from it. I usually proofread my posts twice before I unleash them to public scrutiny. Unfortunately, even after that, I’ve still found spelling and grammar mistakes after pressing the deceptively plain "publish" button. I frantically start clicking and editing, praying all the while that I get it fixed before anyone visits and before the readers that many of you use pick it up. Once that is done, I give the post one final reading. The point is, I’ve read that post a minimum of four times – probably closer to six or so – and never saw what most of you did. And I feel horrible for it; like I took you for a ride.

Am I concerned for Tyler? Of course. I’m his parent, his protector; I’ll be concerned for him every day of my life. Am I worried about it? Not really. I know he’ll be just fine. Am I worried that you hate it when people ask themselves questions like this and then answer themselves? Absolutely! It annoys me as well sometimes, so I try to keep it to a minimum.

The post only had a few comments from my readers, but I received quite a few emails about it, along with some comments on Facebook, a couple tweets, and a live conversation or two about it. It appears that many of you finished the post thinking that Tyler couldn’t hear. Maybe it had something to do with the post being titled, "Great, so he can’t hear, then?" Oops.

To clarify, the Doc said that he still has fluid in his ears, and it could create some hearing difficulties. Tyler responds to many sounds, so I’m not worried that he can’t hear. I just don’t know how clearly he is hearing. I compounded that with the fact that he had a double ear infection two months ago and has never stopped tugging on his ears, and took it to extremes. Gee, I wonder why my blog is called Irrational Dad.

After many – MANY – suggestions, I told Sarah that we’d be silly to not at least try taking Tyler to a chiropractor. Sarah made an appointment and took Tyler in yesterday while I was at work (actually, I was driving home from work and only missed the appointment by twenty minutes).

Since I wasn’t there, I won’t be able to do justice to exactly what transpired. Sarah said that Dr. Nagel used a tool that she compared to an air gun. Google has failed me in trying to get a proper name for the instrument, so we’ll just have to call it an adjustment gun. After checking Tyler’s back and neck, Lee (Dr. Nagel) shot him a couple times. This gun does not puncture the skin nor inject weird voodoo medicine into the body. From the little I have been able to gleam from the internet, I believe that the tool is basically a spring loaded actuator that gives a speedy, yet painless adjustment to whichever vertebrae has been targeted. Using an otoscope, Lee saw the fluid in Tyler’s ears, so when he goes back in for his second of three adjustments in a few days, we’ll know if things are improving. Personally, I won’t need a fancy otoscope to know if Tyler’s getting better. I just need to see Sarah wake up in the morning feeling rested because Tyler didn’t wake up crying four times in the night.

Lee is very optimistic that we’re on the right road. He is the husband of a woman that Sarah and I adore (our Bradley Instructor), and we assume that she has a pretty decent taste in men, plus our super-awesome Nurse Midwife takes her children to him as well, and I’d be inclined to believe anything she says, even if she told me that the Earth is flat. And to be perfectly honest, with the alternative being the possibility of putting Tyler under anesthesia to get surgery, this treatment will be worth every penny, whether it ends up being necessary or not.

Tyler is nine months old and has had his first chiropractic adjustment. I’m 31 years old (41.3 times older than Tyler) and have been to the chiropractor fewer times than my own son. Just thinking about that makes my T4 hurt. Seriously. If Lee saw an x-ray of my spine, I think he would drink a bottle of Gatorade (you know, to get his electrolytes up), tell his receptionist to clear his schedule, crack his knuckles (ha), and take me right to the gates of heaven a few times.

Great, so he can’t hear then?

April 7th, 2009 | Posted by Joe in pain | sick Tyler | surgery | Tyler - (10 Comments)

When Sarah was pregnant, we would tell people that she was due "sometime in the middle of June," because we understood that a due date is just a guess. We tend to take the same approach on the subject of milestones. Babies will roll over, crawl, walk, talk and steal their first car on their own schedule. The only time we really look at any of the myriad milestones charts online is before Tyler’s next wellness checkup.

Tyler had his nine month appointment today. Unfortunately, I had to miss it due to an urgent issue at work. Last night, I pulled up an assessment checklist to go over, so that we (*cough*Sarah*cough*) would be prepared for the appointment. Does he grab objects with his forefinger and thumb? Does he look for hidden objects? Does he reach out to familiar people? Yes, yes and yes. Excellent, we’re off to a great start. I was slightly frustrated that all the questions referred to baby as "she" or "her", instead of "he" or "him". This made reading the questions aloud difficult when it came time to substitute the female connotation with the male.

Does he make consonant sounds (like ba, ma, ka, ga, da, pa)? Well, no, not really. He says ba a lot, and da maybe twice. Does he associate waving with the word "bye"? Umm, no. We practice "hi". Much more than "bye", but he waves when we wave, not because of me saying the actual word "hi". Does he say ma-ma or da-da? No. Does he try to imitate sounds that you make? No, I didn’t know he should be.

Tyler’s results for each section were either "above average" or "doing well", so I moved on to finding out what order baby teeth typically grow in. I wasn’t particularly concerned with any of it. Mostly because he is my baby boy, and he is absolutely perfect in my eyes.

"Well," Sarah started, "he’s never stopped pulling on his ears since his infection."

Ear infection. The only phrase more vulgar – to parents, at least – than the mother of all curse words. Sarah and I were subjected to a fair share of lost sleep, lost patience and gained frustration from Tyler’s double ear infection. His first round of antibiotics did nothing. We had to switch to a different too-long-to-pronounce drug which he did respond to. But now that Sarah mentioned it, he has been tugging on his ears still. I just assumed he had discovered his ears and was playing with them. When he discovers something else and plays with that for the next sixteen to eighty-three years, I’m not going to rush him to the doctor screaming of his urinary tract infection.

"Doc, he won’t stop tugging on that thing. It’s got to be infected. Or broke. Or something."

"Well, sir, what your son is doing is perfectly nor-"

Tyler yells, "I hate you, dad! I’m seventeen years old! Why won’t you leave me alone?!"

"Oh God, doc. The infection has spread to his brain. I’ll sign all the waivers, we need to get him in an O.R., stat."

The point is, I thought the ear infection was gone. And technically, it’s true. His ears are not infected. But…

Sarah explained the ear situation to the doc and told her that when she (Sarah) was a baby (and into childhood), she had to have multiple surgeries to get tubes put in her ears because she was plagued with ear infections and hearing problems.

Shocked by this, the doctor told Sarah that she was the exception to the rule, and – when tubes are necessary – only one surgery is typically needed. She looked into his ears and said that, even though the infection is gone, he does still have fluid in there.

Aside from the possibility of another ear infection, the concern is that Tyler may not be hearing much more than muddled sounds. Stick your head in a bucket of water if you’re curious.

She wants to see Tyler again in four weeks for a follow-up. If there’s no improvement, we need to see an ENT (Ear, Nose and Throat doctor) to have his ears checked so that they can gauge how much Tyler can hear and advise us from there.

So, what can Sarah and I do about it? We can cross our fingers and hope for the best. The Journal of Clinical Chiropractic Pediatrics has done studies on the prevention of ear infections through regular minor adjustments. Unfortunately, health insurance classifies chiropractors as specialists. What that means to me is a copay that is almost comical, but teeters on absurd. I doubt it would do much good to lie Tyler on the floor and walk across his back myself, as my only chiropractic training involves giving someone a bear-hug and lifting them off the floor to get their back to crack. And I suspect even that would be frowned upon by the professionals in the field.

Anyway, I’ll be over here, crossing my fingers for the next four weeks. I’m also going to fashion a harness that will hold Tyler in a fully upright position 24 hours a day. Fluid cannot possibly defy the laws of gravity.

He Showed Me ALL of His Love

March 15th, 2009 | Posted by Joe in adventures in babydom | gross | poop | poor Sarah | sick Joe | sick Tyler - (7 Comments)


Last Tuesday is one for the books. I had a long day at work, but I won’t bore you with the details. Upon returning home, I discovered that somebody had installed a lake in my backyard. Some could argue that it was due to the massive amounts of rain that we received that day, but I like my idea better. Sarah told me that Tyler wasn’t eating very well that day, and that he developed a cough. The awesomeness of this particular day kept getting better and better, wouldn’t you agree? Later on in the evening, Sarah informed me that water was dripping into our upstairs bedroom. Fantastic.

But I’m leaving out a key element here.

After Tyler had his dinner (peas, sweet potatoes, and rice cereal) we put him on the floor to crawl around while Sarah and I had our dinner. Sarah made a cheesy tuna noodle casserole, and it was delish.

From the floor, Tyler started making noises.

”NNnnnnnnnnt. NNNNNNNNNnnnnnnt. Uhhhhhnnnnnnnt.”

They were more of a grunting noise, and it’s a sound we’re very familiar with.

”Is Tyler pooping? Yes, Tyler is pooping.” I try to bring yes and no into most of my conversations with Tyler, so that he may begin to understand what those words mean. I also, desperately, want him to know what the word “poop” means because I want him to be able to eventually tell me when he needs to perform such a task. I don’t know when potty training is supposed to start, but the sooner he learns what he’s doing (and how disgusting it is), the better.

Sarah, being a stay at home mom, deals with poopy diapers much more often than I do. As such, I take her advice on the subject (among other things, her credentials include being pooped on). She said that I should give him a couple minutes, to be sure he was “done”. So I finished dinner. Tyler started doing the “I’m tired” routine very shortly after that. You know the drill. Whining, eye rubbing, whining, head lulling, whining. I scooped him up and informed him that we’d be making a journey into the living area where I would wipe and clean his bottom, and fit him with a hot-off-the-showroom, clean diaper. Upon completion of this adventure, we would put some warm and fuzzy pajamas on the little guy, and go do our nigh nighs.

Our kitchen has linoleum floors (I know, right? I’m living the high life over here), and the dining area has hardwood floors. The living area is carpeted, and this is where Tyler decided to show me all of his love. And this is when I realized that Tyler was not tired, but very, very sick. I fully understand that I can embellish certain things, to make them more entertaining – nothing big, because I think the facts are humorous by themselves – but I’m here to tell you that I’ve never seen vomit like this before. We’re talking Selma Blair and The Exorcist here. I was holding Tyler so that our heads were next to each other, him facing behind me. All I heard was a gurgling sound. Still holding Tyler, I turned to see what was going on and, in doing so, created an arched trail of vomit on the floor. The carpeted floor.

But that’s not the worst part! It got on ME. It was all over my arms. Honest to God (although I can’t think of a God that would allow this to happen to me), I had no idea so much fluid – and partially digested baby food – could fit in Tyler’s little belly.

”HOLY CRAP!” was all that I could think to say.

”What’s up?” Sarah called from the kitchen.

”Tyler just threw up EVERYWHERE!”

Sarah, like a ninja, just seemed to materialize in the living room with towels in her hands. She tended to cleaning up Tyler, while I rushed to the sink to clean myself. Delilah, the eternal helper, tried to lick the carpet clean for us. Although I was tempted to just let her do it, so that Sarah and I could clean and comfort Tyler, I shooed her away. I sat on the couch with Tyler – stripped to his diaper – and Sarah started spraying cleaner on the carpet. I felt so bad for the little guy. He just seemed so “out of it”. As a testament to how out-of-it he was feeling, he actually snuggled with me on the couch and rested his head on my chest. Normally, the boy fights sleep as if it’s his last night on Earth. To his credit, he’s very good at going to sleep when we put him in his crib though.

He vomited again in the middle of the night in his crib, so he had to sleep in our bed. This went on until we decided that we should probably get advice from our family doctor. The catalyst for me was Wednesday evening, when he vomited onto the tray on his highchair. It was green and white from the mucous and breastmilk. Tyler went in on Thursday and came out with the catch-all diagnosis of “Upper Respiratory Infection”. We decided to give him 24 more hours before trying antibiotics. I won’t get too much into it, but antibiotics have been linked to allergies and asthma in little ones.

Thursday evening, as if he understood that he was on a get-better-or-get-pills countdown, Tyler started feeling better. Sarah was exhausted and crashed on the couch, and her two boys played on the floor. Tyler was crawling everywhere and had finally regained his smile. The relief that the smile afforded me was immense.

When Sarah woke up from her nap and I told her how awesome Tyler seemed to be doing, she replied, “My throat hurts.”

On Friday evening, my throat started getting scratchy. On Sunday morning (right now), I want to cut my head off so that the pain will go away. It’s no secret that I’m a big baby when I’m sick, and poor Sarah has to deal with it.

The silver lining on all this is that Sarah feels much better today, and Tyler’s doing well, aside from a phlegmy cough.

Charades

February 15th, 2009 | Posted by Joe in adventures in babydom | allergies | Bad parenting | delilah | games | sick Tyler | Tyler - (9 Comments)
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I’ve never played charades before. To get me to list and discuss the myriad reasons why this is the case, I’d need to be lying on a leather couch, talking to a guy whose name is suffixed with the letters PhD. Instead, I’ll simply say that it just isn’t my “thing”. I understand the basics of the game. A person will stand in front of everyone else and start acting like a fool, flapping their arms, hopping on one foot, and pointing at their nose. This is all done in pantomime, because the “actor” is not allowed to speak. The audience then shouts out what they think the phrase is. The actor grows increasingly frustrated that the audience can’t see that the answer is – OBVIOUSLY – Chuck Norris. Wash, rinse, repeat.

There are certain signals that the actor can make to help the audience along. If he touches his nose and points at someone, that person correctly guessed the word that the actor was working on. Tugging on your ear means “sounds like”. So, if he were to pull his ear and jump in the air, the audience would start shouting “dump”, and “bump”, and “hump”. I only know this because I’m pretty sure I saw an episode of The Cosby Show, or Full House when I was younger where the family played charades.

Here in the Gearhart household, we’ve been playing charades for the past three or four days. We made the mistake of having Tyler start the game as the actor. He’s only 7 months old, so we didn’t set high expectations for him. But he was horrible at it. Maybe we didn’t explain the game to him well enough (or at all), but Sarah and I have been yelling out our guesses over and over again, and Tyler hasn’t once touched his nose and pointed at us. Needless to say, we’re still in the first round of the game.

First, Tyler would grab and tug on his ear. “Sounds like”, I thought. No problem. Then Tyler would yell and scream. Sarah and I thought of every rhyming word we could think of. Steam, team, cream, deem, slipstream. Nothing. Bell, cell, tell, oyster shell. Zilch. After a few days of guessing, we decided that either he sucks at charades, or we suck at parenting, so we took him to our family doctor. I had to work, so Sarah took him in.

The diagnosis: Sounds like Bubble Smear Chinflection.

Tyler is now taking Baby Motrin for pain (berry flavored), and amoxicillin for the infection.

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Double ear infection. *sigh*

To top it all off, we just (last week) took Delilah to the vet to get her ears flushed. She’s had ear problems and allergies since the day we got her. We have to put medicine in her ears everyday and give her an antibiotic pill with her food.

DOUBLE double ear infection. *double sigh*

Tyler makes me sick

September 27th, 2008 | Posted by Joe in poor Sarah | sick Joe | sick Tyler | Tyler - (3 Comments)
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I got home from Nashville on Wednesday night. On Thursday, Sarah tells me that she thinks Tyler is getting sick.

What?

On Tuesday, Sarah and Tyler went to spend the afternoon with Sarah’s sister (Jiillian), Jilian’s daughter (Lexi), and some friends of Jillian. A girls’ night thing, apparently. Well, I guess Lexi, who’s around 18 months old, was congested and moody. For whatever reason, they assumed she was teething, and not a carrier of the black plague, as I would have immediately deduced, had I been present at the time.

With a heavy tone of sarcasm, I can tell you that Friday was a LOT of fun. Tyler cried and cried and cried. And when he was done crying, he cried some more. We foolishly tried giving him a bottle. Tyler has been breastfed exclusively, save one night. Trying to give him a bottle while he is sick is a mistake that ONLY new parents can make. Well, we made that mistake. I had already, in previous days, had a couple issues where Tyler didn’t want to be held or comforted by me. He wanted his mommy, and that was it. Although I know this isn’t the case, I felt overcome with a sense of rejection. It had a profound affect on me. The sum of those instances along with Friday’s drama left me very discouraged. It saddened me to the point that I had to give Tyler to Sarah and head upstairs to be alone for a few minutes. I fully understand that he’s with Sarah everyday, and I shouldn’t take it personally… but it’s hard.

Tyler also decided that he had no desire to be in his bed that night. We didn’t want to lie him flat anyway. We wanted to prop him up somehow so that he could breathe a little easier. I didn’t see an easy way to do that at the time, so Sarah decided to just let him sleep in our bed. I wasn’t planning on going to bed for another hour or so, so I opted to just sleep on the couch, because I didn’t want to possibly wake Tyler when I came up.

I spent the next half an hour searching around on Google for sick babies. At 11:40p, I made a run up to Walmart to pick up some Vicks BabyRub. As I’m trying to navigate the many shelves and racks of medication, an announcement comes over the speaker system.

“The registers will shut down in 5 minutes. Please complete your purchases by then. The store will re-open at 12:05 am.”

Excuse me? The sign on the front of the building CLEARLY states that they are open 24 hours a day. I’ve worked in retail before. It was a horrible experience, but it has afforded me the knowledge of how retail operations work. I assume that Walmart needs to poll their registers every night, and need to balance their tills. Luckily for me, an employee – that looked like she had absolutely no desire to be there – happened by. I asked for help, and she took me to the baby medicine section. I grabbed the Vicks BabyRub, and hightailed it to the registers.

I’m sure that our particular Walmart is just like most of the others out there, but let me set this up anyway. There are around 35 registers. Eight of them are the cursed “self checkout” registers that rarely work. My two major gripes with the self checkout registers at Walmart are as follows:

1) There is no limit on how many items you can bring through. On more than one occasion, I’ve seen people with carts that are absolutely overflowing with food and clothes trying to check themselves out.
2) It’s always the people that DON’T know how to use the self checkout that end up using the self checkout. The one employee overlooking all of the self checkout registers seems to loathe their job more than the zombie-lady that helped me find the Vicks BabyRub, and has no intention of helping the person until they’ve been standing there, swiping the wrong barcode for at least 5 minutes.
3) I know I said I’ve got 2 gripes, but I’ve got to get this one in there too… I HATE the software that runs those systems. If you so much as breathe on the bagging area it starts barking commands at you to remove the last bagged item. You do so, and it just freezes and the stupid red light starts flashing – notifying the sole employee to actually take 3 or 4 steps over to you to help you. You know, effectively ruining their entire day.

But guess what??? Out of the 35 registers at Walmart, only 1 is open at 11:45pm. I am THE LAST PERSON in line, and I’ve only got one freaking item. When it’s my turn to check out, the guy at the register tells me that he needs to shut down and that I’ll need to wait 15 minutes before I can ring out.

I gave him the I-know-you’re-joking-but-am-really-not-in-the-mood-for-it look, and quickly realized that he wasn’t joking. I was in no mood whatsoever to get into a discussion with him about it so – as politely as I could – I said, “I’ve got a sick baby at home. Either you’re going to sell this to me right now, or I’m walking out with it.”

He looks over his shoulder to a lady that I never even saw. I assume she must have been his manager. She had a tone that made me think that she believed this cashier to be the dumbest man on the planet. She said, “Yes, ring him out.” I can’t do it justice in type, but she was less than pleased that he said I’d have to wait. Either that, or she played it off really well.

The Vicks BabyRub seemed to have made a world of difference. Unfortunately, I seem to have caught whatever it is that Tyler caught. My throat is all scratchy and sore right now. Chloraseptic spray isn’t doing much good, but it never really does anyway. That crap only works for about 5 seconds, yet it’s one of the first things I reach for when I get a sore throat.

And I feel so bad for Sarah, because I’m the biggest baby in the WORLD when I’m sick.