More hospital nights.

I haven't been to the office for five work days, but it really hasn't been a refreshing experience. It started off well enough. I spent much of the first two day and weekend watching basketball. There were some good games. My pools ended pretty early, but it has still been fun, and I've really liked being able to watch whatever games I want online.

The last three days have been spent up in the pediatric neurology unit up at UCSF. This wasn't prompted by any particular trauma or event, it was just some more testing. More eegs. They took the 20 leads or so and glued them to S's head again. She was actually a pretty good sport about it. They were trying to catch some particular behaviors, so essentially, I had to sit there and stare at my kid ALL DAY & NIGHT trying to catch a twitch and hit a button and hope that it wasn't a seizure event.

Staying over at a hospital is a step above being in prison or an insane asylum but not as nice as a hotel. We had our own room and our own bathroom (not that S used it). But essentially, I was trapped. I had TV with cable, internet access and hospital quality food and bedding, but little time for any of it. Especially the sleeping. Only when Wifey dropped by for a few hours each night did I get any break.

S seems like she's comfortable in almost any environment. She didn't love having all these things strapped to her head, but she handled it better than I probably would have. The problem was there were a couple kids in nearby rooms screaming their heads off all night. Literally. It seemed like the kid next door spent hours yelling at her mom.

For some reason I felt dirtier coming back from three days in the hospital than I have from a three day camping trip out in the wilderness.

Bad Dream

I've always felt it was bad form for bloggers or just about anyone else to talk or write about dreams. It's narcism at it's worst. It's a cheap literary device for interjecting about conflict rather than resolving it. Unless your initials are MLK, I don't want to here a thing about your dreams.

So here goes. Last night I had a dream where I was sitting in a church pew. And for some reason I got in a shouting match with a four year old sitting in the front row. And no, it wasn't little J. Reflecting on it, I think I've been a little angry at God. Today I'm at UCSF again, knowing that I'll be spending the night while S is strapped into a machine recording her brain waves. And on some level that's upsetting.

I feel my life has been pretty blessed. I'm surrounded by the right people, I've got the right job. I've had a wealth of experiences. I've got two superstars for kids. But I look at little S, and I know that she's never going to have some of the basics that we all take for granted. My wife and I have been busting our balls day in and day out to make her life the best it can be, We're trying to give her every possible opportunity. And it all might not make a damn bit of difference. We're pretty helpless.

It's not God's fault. It's not anyone's fault really. And I've prayed today, but that dream sort of shocked me.

10 year

This St. Paddy's day roughly marks my 10 year anniversary at my current occupation. It's hard to believe that I've spent 10 years at anything, let alone one job. I can't think of anything else I've done so long. My tradition has been to take this time off this year. Not that I'm into the Guiness Milkshakes, leperchauns or any other St. Paddy's day things. This is about the most fascinating sports event in existence. NCAA basketball. For the first time in the last 10 months or so, I'm regretting the lack of cable TV. It seems like for the first time ever, they are showing every single game. They've just put them on different networks. If I had cable, I could keep the remote busy and check in on all of them. Instead, I'm just going to have one on TV and have another game on the Internet. I haven't figured what I'm going to do with that One Million I win for having a perfect bracket yet.