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hello mudda. hello fadda.
I dropped Ellen off at camp on Sunday at 3 o’clock in the afternoon. She was beyond excited. She and seven of her school friends managed to end up in the same cabin for a week of pure fun and adventure!
At 5:40 that evening, the phone rang and we were told that we needed to pick her up immediately. She was “very weak and had thrown up blood.” The call came exactly five minutes after I walked in the door from making the two and a half hour drive back home from camp.
Steve and I talked on the phone for almost his entire drive. Actually, I paced and tried not to cry and he talked. I was scared about the “blood” part - it took me 10.3 seconds to jump off of the worst-case-scenario ledge.
After Steve assured me that it was very unlikely to be any of the terrible diseases that I was already Googling, I shifted from scared to sad. I was so incredibly disappointed for her.
I tried to talk Steve into “doctoring up” and taking his medical bag so that he could check her out there and leave her if she was OK. He said it would be best to have someone else look at her even though he thought it was probably a combination of the heat and the fact that she had gotten so car sick on the way to camp that we had to pull over for a Sprite.
I finally broke down and called the camp director before Steve arrived.
“Hi. This is Ellen’s mom. I was wondering if I could talk to her for a minute.”
“I’m sorry. We’re having our opening ceremonies right now and all of the kids are singing. She’s in a little room off of the dining hall and it’s too loud for her to talk on the phone. She’s OK. We just aren’t equipped to handle bloody vomit. I looked at the vomit myself and it was bright pink and red. She said she hasn’t eaten anything like that, so I’m guessing it was blood.”
I wanted to kill someone. I’m not sure why or who. Given the H1N1 virus epidemic sweeping through camps this summer, they were doing the right thing. I just couldn’t imagine her alone in a little room listening to her friends sing and cheer. (As it turns out she was with a lovely counselor who was also named Ellen, and big Ellen was teaching my Ellen the best way to write her name in bubble letters).
By the time Steve and Ellen got home, she felt great. Cold and wet, but great. They quarantined her so quickly that she came home in her wet bathing suit and water shoes. Steve stopped at Walmart and bought her a blanket and a pair of shorts.
She wept a little when I tucked her in. “Please mom. I’m 100%! Can I please go back? Please?"
I told her that we’d have someone in her dad’s office check her out in the morning and I’d drive her back if everything was OK.
Right before I left her room I asked her, “What exactly did you eat today?”
She sat up and said, “French toast for breakfast and a tiny bit of the lunch you made. I wasn’t very hungry – I was too excited.”
I sat back down on her bed and stroked her hair. “Ellen you know that you can’t skip meals like that. You and your dad both need to eat or you don’t feel good.”
“I know mom, but I just wasn’t hungry.”
“Ellen – did you eat anything at church this morning?”
“Yes I did! I ate a cupcake with a bright red and hot pink frosting flower.”
Have fun at camp my very sweet girl! I miss you.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Reader Comments (36)
The girls will have a wonderful adventure...without us. They will be ok.
This tugged hard at my "mom instincts". (in other words, I cried for both of you and laughed at the end. Impressively quick since it's a rather short piece of writing!)
Thanks for sharing. Always.
You're so right, parenting is definitely not for the faint of heart!
thankfully the culprit was a cupcake and your little one is off enjoying camp once again. I found your blog the long way around connecting by way of this and that blog and am so glad I did. Very relevant work you're doing!
I hope camp is wondeful for your daughter...my kids went for years and years to the same camp and now that they both are counselors at the same camp where they grew up...well it does my heart soooo good....camp is a good thing !
now we live so far away and they both had to drive the almost an 8 hour drive to get there...in different cars...but they wouldn't miss being there for anything !
so summer has been very quiet here....who knew at 44 both my kids would leave me to spend the whole summer away ?
and have I loved it....actually, yes, I have :)
Ah...to be a parent- My daughter was travelling to Athens via Munich yesterday and she had ten hours to spend on her own in Munich- she is eighteen but still I was very concerned about how she would manage...and of course the minute she landed in Munich her cell run out of battery- Its many, many hours later and I just found out she has finally landed in Athens and is fine- but I could do a bit of screaming- I guess I can imagine terrible things that are just that :' imaginary' but you know how it is....in another continent , my sweet Rea, all on her own...la,la,la - ....
Enjoy the ALL IS WELL time now! I certainly will!
Annamaria