Greatest Worst Place

Yesterday morning, Elijah shuffled downstairs and plopped on the couch. His eye was completely swollen shut. I felt his head and asked him which one of his stuffed animals clocked him in the middle of the night. He was a little warm but didn’t seem too sick. So like any terrible father, I left it up to Diana to handle after she woke up.

Later in the day, Di called with the diagnosis from our doctor. His eye was infected with…something medical sounding. Not a big deal as long as he took the prescribed antibiotics. But if he didn’t take them, things could go south.

Can you see where this is going?

Diana and Eli spent the entire day in fierce battle over the medicine. Grape flavored antibiotics? Spit in her face. Bubble gum flavored antibiotics? Impenetrable Eli mouth fortress.

Round about bath time, his fever spiked. 106. For those of you who haven’t seen hospital related television dramas, that’s high. The doctor said it’s hospital time. Just about that moment I entered the house from a delightful bike ride commute shouting, “Where’s my dinner, woman?”

For Eli, the hospital was the greatest and the worst in the world. He was able to drink all the apple juice he wanted. But he also had to have a nurse shove an IV into his arm. He got to make his automatic bed go up and down. But he had to have a nurse shove a Tylenol up his butt. He got a balloon for being a good boy. But the balloon had a Mini Mouse on it.

It broke my heart to see my little guy in that big bed. But he was 85% brave, which is 80% more than I’d be. And he charmed the staff over and over (“What do you want to be when you grow up, Eli?” “Bigger.”).

I went home to take over Luca duties from Kitty and Steve and Di stayed with Eli. The report this morning was all good. Eli’s back to normal temps and his eye no longer looks like the last five minutes of every Rocky movie.

The moral of this story? Keep your germy hands out of your eyeballs and take your medicine.