Like Father, Like Son

Let's cut to the chase: right now it is 1:30 a.m., and if you know anything about me, you're wondering what on earth I'm doing up at such an ungodly hour. Well, I'll tell you. We've been at MUSC all day with Spanky - having his appendix removed.

Honestly.

It all started about 2 hours after he returned from a weekend youth retreat at church. Apparently Scott can take him away for a week at a time, three years in a row, but give him to Mike and Ernest for 48 hours and he comes back in need of having parts removed.

He came home and was starving. So we fed the boy. We're good parents like that. A couple of hours later, he's laying on the sofa, moaning. He is nothing if not a Drama King. SuperHubby banished him to the upstairs because, frankly, the moaning gets old pretty quickly. An hour later, he barfs all over the bathroom (walls, tub, floor, you name it. It was ugly. And no, I did NOT clean it up. That's SH's job. My job is snot.)

Then Spanky goes to bed. Forever. He doesn't move. This is not good. I figure he's just really tired from barfing all that nastiness up and being awake all weekend on his retreat. But this morning, he fell asleep on his floor and didn't move. All day. I explained to SuperHubby my fear: because of the moaning and major showboating, I have always had this fear that the child will have appendicitis but we'll think it's just a hangnail and ignore it. And we almost did.

But we called the doctor and they saw him; then they sent him to MUSC to "rule out" appendicitis. Three doctors later, they'd ruled it IN and were planning on surgery. The big problem? I was stranded at home because SH had taken my car - because his car was in dire straights. Now who wants to be a Fitzgerald?

I called everyone I knew. I couldn't get anyone on the phone. And frankly, I was a little frantic. Not nearly as calm as when its SH on the table. I finally got the Smurf and she came and ran me to the ER and took FrogBoy to spend the night with her. Then we spent the next several hours waiting through a gunshot wound and a pediatric heart transplant, which pretty much bummed me out.

Other than the resident who felt compelled to discuss the possible complications of surgery while standing over my 13-year-old's bed, the entire staff was fantastic. Spanky did great and came through like a trooper. I was really proud of him. And man, did he look like his daddy. If SH hadn't been sitting next to me, I would have sworn it was him in that bed.

And so ends another exciting day in the Fitzgerald household. It is January 21 and we have met our $5500 family deductible already. I discovered that my son can be very brave when he has to be, and I am extremely proud of the way he handled himself throughout the whole ordeal. And like I told him earlier (when he was still dopey and probably won't remember it) - he can hold this over our heads for the rest of our lives. We kind of thought he was just being dramatic.