Where K goes to the prom and the Dawg offers up a gift

Note: This was drafted on Sunday but posted today.

P.

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Twenty four hours ago, I was jockeying for position with a thousand other parents at the high school’s spring prom Grand March, which is where each couple going to the prom is announced, marches in a V-shaped path through the school gymnasium while friends and relatives take blurry pictures of them from the bleachers. I grabbed a seat near the first of three riser platforms that the costumed couples had to ascend and descend along their route and upon which they were free to pose, twirl, or do something else of their choosing. My favorite was the “trod on dress and nearly pull it off the chest” step that several of the girls found themselves doing as they made their way in unfamiliar shoes and formals. Fortunately, it was close encounters only.

While I was doing that, C was home sick. We went to the clinic in the morning to get platelets and while there, she threw up. This continued all afternoon and into the night. What made it more worrisome was that it appeared that she was losing blood in the process.

She has been having problems with a consistent nose bleed for weeks, but that seemed to get better in the last few days. It is possible though that she is still bleeding however and that it is flowing internally rather than externally. Whatever the case, last night had us worried.

It is not just the bleeding that is a problem. It is also the dehydration and the lack of nutrition that goes along with it.

C stopped throwing up around midnight and we were able to get some sleep but it is safe to say that we are both running a few cylinders short today. I took her back down to the clinic this morning to get a couple of liters of fluids put in to counteract the dehydration. She lost about three pounds overnight, all of it fluids.

Right now, she is resting, but still not interested in food. K has returned from the prom, but doesn’t have much to say about it. I am too tired to press. J is still with his aunt Pat where he spent the night last night.

As if this were not enough, the dawg ate something really dead yesterday and decided to mimic C overnight in the laundry room. Usually, she is pretty nonchalant about barfing when she has to do it, but this time even she was offended by what she had done. When I opened the laundry room door this morning to let her out and feed her, I was greeted by a smell so odious that my eyes started to run and my nose closed up.

I was dumbstruck by the cloying smell of death and decay. What in the world had crawled into the room to die? I looked around but did not see anything obvious. Sophie was looking guilty, but since there was no physical evidence, I shrugged it off and took her out for a walk to get the paper.

She immediately produced two prodigious examples of her digestive workings that started more alarm bells ringing. I have never seen her so productive in that manner.

Upon coming back into the laundry room, which is our family entrance to the house, I was again struck with the knowledge that there was something very, very wrong in that room. I then noticed that Sophie’s blanket (or quilt, really) was all rolled up in a ball, which I found to be odd because she is always lying on it and it was not possible to do so the way it was positioned.

I decided to take it out and shake it to see if that might shed some light on the problem. As I picked it up and moved toward the door, there was a sound akin to what you might hear as you strolled through the cow barn at the state fair. Kind of a cross between a plop and a thud. Looking down, I saw what Sophie had tried so hard to hide – a stinking pile of goo that could have come right out of a low-grade horror film. Suddenly, the magnitude of the stench grew exponentially and I nearly lost it. The blanket, the door mat, and my running shoes all went outside with various quantities of contamination.

I couldn’t deal with it right away. It was all too much. Instead, I went back inside, glared at the dog, got a cup of fresh coffee, and sat down with the morning paper to calm my nerves. The fact that I thought that news of fresh atrocities in the middle east, clamoring right-wing political candidates, losing sports teams were all better that what faced me behind door number one will give you a sense of my mental condition this morning.

I am better now. I cleaned things up. The blankets are washed. C is home and resting. K is home (if quiet). J is due home soon. We are safe whereas many others around the world are not.

P.