Benadryl

Luca puked Saturday night. It was one of those matter of fact pukes that don’t really cause much drama. He barfed, announced it, Diana cleaned up some, Grover ate some, and then we all went back to bed.

But that puke had a little extra built in. That particular puke had dispatched an army of tiny men with tiny ball pain hammers to knock little dents into every inch of Luca’s body.

Like the aforementioned barf, Luca didn’t seem to mind the hundreds of welts all over his body. This was a missed opportunity. He could have parlayed it into a couple free days off school or a Lego set. At minimum some ice cream. But he just shrugged it off and delighted in showing everyone his welty butt.

If you’ll recall from Luca’s early days, he developed some allergies that required us to stalk him at all hours with an Epipen in case his throat ever closed up. So we got a little nervous he was having some kind of allergic reaction to laying around in the same pajamas for 48 hours straight.

So Diana asked me to call a very unenthusiastic doctor on call who said go get some Benadryl and never interrupt her viewing of “Downton Abbey” ever again.

Diana asked me a barrage of questions of which I didn’t have the answer. I assumed the role of “Dr. Hamann” and lied a diagnosis in an authoritative voice rather than have to call back Downton Abbey. I said this happens all the time (probably not), and would be cleared up in a few days (totally made up) and all he needs is a dose of Benadryl (true) and rest and lots of fluids (made up).

This seemed to calm down Diana and I went to Jewel. During the 5 block drive, my brain developed a little hole in it where the name “Benadryl” fell into, never to be found again.

I stood in the kid’s section, dumbfounded. What was it that I was supposed to get? NyQuil? French Fries? A tire iron? I grabbed what I thought the Downton Abbey doctor said to get, which ended up being a popular cold and cough medicine instead of the Benadryl.

I came home and attempted to assume the Dr. Hamann persona again. “No. This is much better for him. Its active ingredient is much more affective against welts because welts are really just his body doing little tiny coughs. Yes. That’s the ticket.”

On my way back to Jewel, I received at text from Diana that simply read, “Please get Benadryl.”

Luca was fine an hour later.