The Continuing (Mis)Adventures of the Sawyer-Espinoza Clan

I’ve decided that I must have a serious problem here. As in, stage an intervention stat for this girl. Although they say that admitting there is a problem is often half the battle, right? Because I strongly suspect that I have somehow unwittingly become….an attention junkie. Really, this is surely not normal. Has my life become nothing more than a constant search for my next fix? Resorting to creating crazy drama to keep that attention coming? It clearly must be some kind of addiction! But what exactly am I getting from all of this, honestly?!

The funny thing is, there are so many things that I never even post about on here. Quite a few new and completely unforeseen things with the kids that we have come up against since I became a solo parent. Yes, my kids are getting older and so of course we naturally deal with different issues. That’s just part of growing up. But there have been plenty of big, hard, sometimes overwhelming things that didn’t get any therapeutic processing or airing out on this blog. It was never my intent to intrude on my children’s privacy and publicly parade their personal lives about online. No matter its origins, this is my blog and my story I am sharing. But as a mother, a huge part of my life revolves around my family.

So what semi-public and appropriate to talk about happenings have there been for our family since I last posted? Well, that first picture stole some of my thunder by announcing that yes, we have Covid. Or rather, I do. And A. Less than two weeks before her next big surgery scheduled for up in Salt Lake (December 20th – hoping we’ll make it home from the hospital in time for Christmas). Jaime was sick first but tested negative for Covid (although with me being positive we assume he did actually have it? still has a nasty cough), and the other three kids have (so far, fingers crossed) been negative.

I’m not gonna lie, I’ve been a bit afraid about getting Covid again. I was quite sick when I had Covid the summer of 2022, something I didn’t go into many details about on here. When mom died the very next week that of course overshadowed everything else about my being sick. I probably should have been hospitalized (lots of trouble breathing, and my feet and hands turned black with “Covid toe”), but as dumb as this sounds I was too sick to get myself to the hospital, and in the haze of my high fevering I was convinced that I couldn’t call anyone because I didn’t want to expose them to Covid. The kids didn’t realize how sick I was either because I was isolating away from them hoping they wouldn’t get Covid. I consider it a miracle on many levels that I not only recovered without going to the hospital, but was able to be there with and for my mom that last week of her life. But I’ve had weird bouts of sudden extreme fatigue and even worse circulation/blood pressure issues ever since, qualifying as having “long Covid.” With the population I work with, and with four children in our home attending four different schools, it has felt inevitable that I would someday catch Covid again. But understandable that I’ve been nervous about how my body would react when I did.

Thankfully this time has not been nearly as bad. Not pleasant by any means, but I have not been dangerously ill. My breathing and oxygen have stayed good, no black extremities (win!), I only fevered for a few days, and probably my worst symptoms have been bad body aches and a sore throat, congestion, and coughing. What has really made a huge difference, though, has been having another adult and driver here, someone who is not only taking care of me, but is also able to get kids to where they need to be and things generally running on track. But oh man, hasn’t this poor guy earned some “normal,” uneventful married/family life time yet? Please?

It’s shocking to list out all of the things that have happened and challenges that have arisen since we got married, and it hasn’t even been two full months yet!!! That’s right, this Sunday will be our two month anniversary. Holy cow!

Because in addition to the things I’ve already mentioned in previous posts, our current Covid, and several things I won’t even write about, it just doesn’t let up!

There have been the usual busy things with school and work and appointments and such, Thanksgiving, so many concerts this time of year (choir, band, and my handbell concerts since I’ve been playing again this season), and so on. Then in the middle of all that this cute girl here got a concussion at school after an unfortunate run-in with the end of a baseball bat during gym class.

A CT scan showed swelling but no bleeding in the brain (thank heavens!), but her symptoms were more severe because she had a concussion less than six months ago last summer (after an unfortunate incident involving her brother and a large stick he was trying to throw as far as he could – ouch!). So waking up every hour during the night, horrible headaches, unevenly dilated pupils, some personality changes, unable to read or do anything with screens, having to constantly wear noise cancelling headphones and sunglasses, missing school, all that fun stuff. We’re still dealing with some of those effects/symptoms.

And of course it would be our house that would, again, have emergency vehicles come roaring up in front on a peaceful Sunday evening, sirens full blaring. I have no idea what my neighbors must think about us at this point. Is this becoming a cry wolf type of thing? I hope not. Because once again we dealt with some carbon monoxide issues. Yes, on the very day I had tested positive for Covid (and felt like crud) our carbon monoxide detector started going off, and did not stop even after we tried changing the battery. Aaaaarrrgh. This is the third time I’ve had to deal with this since Kenny died (and never before, of course), and the second in less than two months! We had to call the fire department and immediately evacuate, being told to not turn any lights on or off so our house wouldn’t accidentally explode. All while feeling terrible and trying to quarantine away from the kids (A was still healthy at that point, and we were especially worried about her not getting Covid).

Turns out that it was a defective detector. Did you know that those need to be replaced every 7-10 years? I do now! (Ours was apparently 10 years old.) A big relief that we didn’t add actual carbon monoxide poisoning on top of everything. I can’t imagine that would have been good with already existing brain damage from a concussion, or memory problems and brain fogginess from Covid, ick.

The fun doesn’t (didn’t?) stop for us, though. I am still sick with Covid, as is A (who thankfully has not been dangerously ill either, but still has felt pretty awful and we’re needing to monitor carefully). Then this morning was spent at the hospital with my son. He injured both of his wrists last night playing dodgeball at his Young Men’s church activity, and this morning could not even move the right one. Believe it or not, with all of the medical things we have dealt with, I have never had a child before with a broken bone (at least not confirmed – M may have broken a toe once). Or stitches. (We tend to think much bigger around here. I told you I was obviously an attention seeker!)

Turns out that he has two sprains, one more severe than the other, and potential fractures in his scaphoid bones (not as likely on the left side, but still a possibility) that wouldn’t show up immediately on an X-ray. We now have a follow up appointment with sports medicine on December 18th, and in the meantime he has the right wrist and hand immobilized, is being careful with the left, we’re working on keeping pain under control, and icing as needed to keep down the swelling. I don’t know if I should say that we can’t seem to catch a break, or that we seem to have too many of them at this point!

That’s the latest update, at least what I’ll share. I will say that having a forced vacation from some things because of Covid hasn’t been the worst thing in the world, even if the timing wasn’t my favorite right before finals and end of semester busyness and prepping for Christmas and a big surgery. But what can you do? I’m actually doing better emotionally than I was, so maybe things are starting to settle down and level out a bit for us. At least, as much as they ever do for this family now!