Dental Surgery is NOT a Man Cold

I saw this clip on Dr Phil from some British show of a man “suffering” from a “man-cold”, in which he phoned an ambulance because his wife didn’t hear his plaintive cries for help. When the paramedics came, they coddled the man and shamed the wife for being so insensitive to what was clearly a very serious “man-cold”. They supplied the man with a bell and told the woman if he should ring the bell, she would need to come and rub his forehead and console him.

So anyways, my husband David had to get a tooth extracted yesterday. I was his ride home and caregiver assigned the very serious responsibility of caring for him while he emerged from sedation. Now, I’d like to point out that Fridays are somewhat busy days for our family right now, in that Marcus has a gymnastics class that carries well into nap time, so the kids are pretty tired by the time we get out of there. Also, I’d like to mention that David had to fast since the night before, and was not particularly helpful up until that point. Gymnastics ended without incident, save for the fact that both kids were pretty tired and cranky by the time we left. Marcus burst into tears as soon as his class was over, but he seems to do that for the first few of any lesson-set in which he’s enrolled. He can’t quite handle the emotional rush of new situations. I managed to herd everybody into the van, and we went to drop David off at the oral surgeon’s. Somewhat frazzled but still coping.

By the time we got home, it was one hour into our regular scheduled nap. When I told the kids that it was naptime, Skyler snored, but Marcus started wailing. I finally got him into bed and asleep at around 2:10 pm. Finally. A rest for Mommy. Ahhhh. Turned the kettle on, did some writing, caught the tail-end of Dr. Phil... then the phone rang. At 3 pm. It was the oral surgeon’s office, asking me to please come get David now. But wait, you don’t understand—my kids nap for TWO HOURS!!! And that two hours is MOMMY TIME!!! And I had been putting out fires all morning and was finally ready to do some dishes and fold some laundry, and this crazy woman on the phone wanted me to WAKE MY SLEEPING BABIES and pick up my husband, whom she advised would be quite dependent on being taken care of.

Uhm.

“Do you need me to get him right now?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, both kids are sleeping... how long can you keep him there?”

“Well... ahh...we’re going to need the beds in recovery...”

“Isn’t there a waiting room where he could hang out for a while?”

“It would really be better if you could pick him up now.”

She didn’t seem to get it. SLEEPING BABIES!!! Everybody knows that you never voluntarily wake a sleeping baby. That is insanity! Her tone had definitely changed with me. She had begun to address me as Someone Who Did Not Understand the Seriousness of the Situation. “You know, he’s going to need to be taken care of as he comes out of sedation. He’s just had surgery.”

That’s my point! What a pain in the ass he is going to be! Why would I want him here? I relented and carried the kids, one at a time, shoeless, coatless, into the van, hoping they would at least get a few more minutes of sleep and not be cranky monsters all evening. I then drove to the surgeon’s to discover that the kids (those shoeless, coatless kids) and I would have to go inside to retrieve said pain in the ass. So, I pick up the kids, balancing Skyler on my big pregnant belly, with Marcus riding my hip, and stagger into the waiting room to get him. My prize. My dopey husband-prize.

Did I mention that I'm often crabby in pregnancy? I feel like somewhere in here I should say, “Poor David.” And I should tell you that I did take care of him—I went to the drug store and got his medications, I made him scrambled eggs, and I set him up on the couch downstairs so the kids wouldn’t bother him. I should probably go check on him at some point.