Apr
09

Def Leper.

So, how do you like the redesign? I seem to be all about fresh starts these days, and this particular new leaf was easy to turn over thanks to the very patient and talented Margot, who not only designed all this but also put up with my (patent pending) patois of perfectionism and clumsiness. When I answered questions about my color preferences with references to Swedish Pippi Longstocking movies and requested minute adjustments to specific letters in my header image, Margot gamely refrained from reaching through the screen to throttle me. And when I sent her an email with the subject line EMERGENCY! shrieking that the site had suddenly lost its formatting and wondering whether someone had hacked into my Very Important and Hack-worthy website or if a server had been felled by bears, she kindly informed me that I had deleted a vital curly bracket with my ham-handed CSS modification—but without mentioning the “ham-handed” part.
Incidentally, it turns out that curly brackets are the key to everything. I have seen this played out many times in the past week, and if ever I emerge from my apartment to find the world crumpled into rubble at my feet, I will know that surely there is a misplaced curly bracket in the Great Stylesheet in the Sky.
But the design is finished now, with the exception of the About page, and a good thing, too, because the world was starting to look to me a bit like this:
Scott and Simone
…Which is how you know you have been spending too much time up to your htmelbows in code.
Anyway, three cheers for Margot! Probably she could use a cocktail about now.

Actually, I could use a cocktail about now as well. Simone celebrated her two-month birthday yesterday by testing positive for MRSA colonization. Yes, that MRSA.
But before you start rolling in ashes and rending your tunics, let me assure you that this is not the same thing as a MRSA infection or (god forbid) MRSA sepsis. The MRSA is not in her, so to speak, it is on her, having set up a tiny utopian colony in her nasal mucous membranes. I have to say that hearing people say that your baby has been “colonized” is rather alarming, and I cannot help but feel that MRSA ought to GO BACK WHERE YOU CAME FROM. WE DON’T WANT YOUR KIND AROUND HERE. Suddenly multiculturalism seems like a terrible idea, at least when the cultures involved are methicillin-resistant staphylococci.

So now there is an isolation cart outside Simone’s room, and a sign on the door, and every nurse who enters wears a gown, and it just about breaks my heart. I feel defensive on Simone’s behalf, somehow, which is silly as it’s not like she contracted MRSA by being especially slutty. She previously tested negative, but after 60-some days in a hospital a baby is bound to catch something. I have been told that being colonized should not effect her health, and in fact a large percentage of the population is colonized without realizing it, meaning you, dear reader, could be harboring a colony right at this very moment. Doesn’t that make you want to take a quick shower? In bleach?

Yesterday went downhill from there. Simone had a positively medieval-looking eye exam (not the cunning miniaturized eye-chart I had been hoping for) and every time they touched one of her eyeballs, which were held open by tiny metal spiders, she let out a squall like a cat would if tied in a burlap sack with a wolverine. The exam showed beginning stages of Retinopathy of Prematurity (stages one and two), and while it’s nothing to worry about just yet, between that and the MRSA I was reminded that things are always popping up when you least expect them, and that there is a whole month left in which to fit a few more NICU catastrophes. I flew right back to the place where I used to live, the place where I am afraid to even imagine my baby coming home. And of course I know that if Simone does come home, there is nothing to say she won’t die of RSV or SIDS or by pulling one of our bookshelves onto herself (my god, I’m a laugh a minute today, aren’t I?). She is doing so well there is no reason for me to be so tiresomely morbid, but I can’t seem to help myself.
Lately I am thinking often of this family, who are facing something they likely never imagined. Babies should not get brain cancer. It is just…wrong. The lovely Emily is organizing support and donations, because if there is one thing those parents should not have to think about right now, it is money.

What I think about, mostly in the middle of the night, is how they will ever feel safe again. I wonder that too for myself, after everything that has happened in the past three months. When will I feel less like every moment with Simone could be my last? Will I ever be able to take her, just a little tiny bit, in the happiest possible way, for granted?

P.S. The first person to say something about hearts walking around outside bodies gets AN ANATOMY TEXTBOOK SOAKED IN HUMAN BLOOD.

By Alexa | Posted in Ceci N'est Pas Une Ecrivaine |