the Bitch in the house

An apropos contest for me if I ever saw one!  The Bitch in the House hereby declares herself in the running for Not Mom of the Year Award.  

As most of you know, the ePrince had been sick, very sick!  But here’s my deep dark mommy secret about the whole thing: He was sick for a while.  I just didn’t believe how serious it was, and then when I figured it out, I freaked out!

The ePrince had been barfing after eating since last summer.  But who knew?!  He eats an incredible amount of food so I was actually worried he was becoming bulimic, not ill!  For instance, he would go to swim practice after school and on the way buy a dozen  and then he ate the whole box everyday!  When he told me that he was barfing at swim practice, what was I supposed to think?! He eat two breakfasts, one at home and the free one he gets from school.  He had lunch and then this damn box of fatty-goodness, then went to swim and barfed, then came home and had dinner and then another dinner around 10pm every day because he was starving.  He was working out for swim practice and then “pumping up his muscles” by doing a billion push-ups every night before bed.  Really, I was hell of worried that I had to figure out how to deal with male bulimia and I was going about my day reading up on how to handle such a sensitive teen concern.  

It never occurred to me that the ePrince might actually be sick.  

It wasn’t until he broke his hip, needed surgery to stop a bloody nose and was still barfing everyday that I started to get worried.  He was nearly 16 year’s old for goodness sakes!  This kinda thing happens to old men not teenaged boys!

The first conclusion by the doctors was the correct one:  that the ePrince needed to have his gallbladder removed.  But the more testing we did, the more normal his gallbladder appeared and the more nervous and terrifying the sicky-options became.  When I left one radiologists office I was trying with all my might to hold back the tears of fear and sadness that my ePrince might have the big C, since there was no other evidence to lead to another conclusion.  Then another radiologist, and another and I was scared to death that my ePrince was really going to have a battle on his hands.

When, after several months, we finally got back to a surgeon and he confirmed the original diagnosis, it was a little hard for me to believe.  These doctors were trying to prepare me for the worst and scaring the hell out of us!  Even thought the tests came back somewhat normal for the ePrince’s gallbladder, I finally agreed to have it looked at and then removed, if necessary.  As many of you know, it was indeed the gallbladder.  The ePrince had gotten an infection on his gallbladder and it was no longer functioning properly by the time we got to the surgery date.  

Throughout that time, we were struggling to help the ePrince eat.  Turns out that if your gallbladder does not function properly, you need to eat a NO-FAT diet.  As many of you know,I am not a chef-extraordinaire in the best of circumstances.  My fam and my visiting Aunt and Uncle had to suffer my horrific fat-free cooking while we waited for the date of the ePrince’s surgery to arrive.  

The poor kid was starving.  Remember all that working out he was doing before we knew he was ill?  He was already a very thin, buff guy.  By the time surgery came around he had lost over 20 lbs.  The ePrince started to look like a damn Auschwitz victim!  And all this, because I was worried that he was bulimic.

Not Mom of the Year.