When a difficult child doesn't feel well ....oh, the agony!

dashcat

Member
And I' don't mean for the difficult child.

Good Heavens! difficult child's allergies, like anyone else in the midwest-post-issac, are acting up. I think iti s possible that it is also a cold, but nevertheless, we can all agree that it is closer to annyoing than life-threatening.

She gets up yesterday "I barely slept. I cried all night. My head is pounding. I feel like I got hit by a truck."

We don't have any allergy medications, so I go to CVS and return with their brand of Sudafed.

All day, she drags around (she is working around here in lieu of an actual job), coughing as though she is about to expire from consumption (forced cough, mostly). Blowing her nose, holding her head.

She is positively insufferable when she even has a hang nail.

Later, she accuses me of "not giving a ****". Seriously? I go out and get medications, pay for them, heat up some homemade chicken noodle soup from the freezer for lunch .....? Am I supposed to suggest she take to her bed until this malady disappears?

I have an autoimmune condition that causes no small amount of pain at times, not to mention disability. Even when it was at it's worst, I still got out of bed every day. Even though I don't work at an actual job, I do work from home AND I work pretty hard around here, too. Without complaining.

I might be able to eek out a bit of sympathy for the allergies, but her histrionics make it nearly impossible for me to sustain any kind of compassion.

I know part of it is that she's trying to get out of working (fat chance), but it's exhausting and crazy-making for me.

Here's hoping today is a better day....
Dash
 

CrazyinVA

Well-Known Member
Staff member
Oh boy do I hear you on this one. Just last week, Youngest had bronchitis. She went to the ER to find this out instead of waiting for a doctor appointment. Got medications. A few days later, was feeling worse, and had a doctor appointment for follow up. She called me to let me know she was feeling horrible, was dizzy and exhausted (she told me she "fainted"), was on her way to the doctor, and that she wa SO sick she thought they might put her in the hospital and wanted to let me know "just in case." (translation: she didn't want to take care of the kids while she was sick and would want me to take off work and drive an hour down there to help her). I told her I knew how hard it was to be sick when you're a single mom, I remember it well. It hoovers. I said to be sure she was well hydrated, rest as much as she could, and to wait and see what the doctor said before worrying about anything as serious as hospitalization. She said, "you act like you don't care!!")

By the next day she was fine, by the way.

Hypochondria and difficult children go together.
 

DammitJanet

Well-Known Member
Oh lord yes. Just last week my biggest difficult child now Mandy had a sore tooth so she went to the dentist. I got a call from Cory in the middle of the day asking me if I would go get the baby that afternoon and keep her that night because Mandy had "surgery" that day. I was like what? What kind of surgery? He wasnt sure. LOL.

I go over and she tells me she had to have a tooth pulled but when she gets there it was so infected but they pulled it anyway and all this green pus started shooting out all over the place and it hurt so much and they had to put "47" shots into her mouth and it would never get numb and she was screaming and cussing everyone out. Oddly though she was talking just fine to me...lmao. How does one count 47 shots? I have never had a dentist even consider pulling a tooth when infected AND she told me they xrayed it so they would have known it was infected.

Then she called me the day before yesterday to tell me she went back to the dentist because it was still hurting and they found a piece of the metal tip of an instrument in her gum. She told me they performed more surgery and it took 27 more shots to get it out and she wanted to go get a lawyer to sue them.

Well yesterday she came by the house but she told Tony that when she went to the dentist the just xrayed her but they didnt take it out because they said it would either work its way out itself or it would cause more damage to go back in right now. So she went to someone else and they told her the same thing so she got mad and she went to a lawyer but they told her she really didnt have much of a case. She is not happy...lmao.
 

CrazyinVA

Well-Known Member
Staff member
Oh, yes, the fainting! How many times have I heard that one?

Today is a bit better but, ugh!

Dash

Seriously? Yours does that too?! Wow lol. Does she also tell you she "feels like she's going to pass out?" Youngest does that, and gets *really* mad when I respond, "well then go lie down so you don't fall!"

I'm laughing at the counted shots too, Janet. I always say, the more elaborate and detailed a story is, the more likely it is to be a difficult child lie/exaggeration!
 

dashcat

Member
Not only do I get the "feel like I'm gonna pass out", but she has told others -on many occassions - about passing out here and there from weakness, hunger (this one is funny), stress and deathly illness. It is nearly impossible to feel empathy toward her when she is sick (except for a few times when she was very young and was too sick for histrionics) because she complains so loudly and often.

When she was 10, would jump into our above ground pool on a regular basis and scream (and I do mean scream) I BROKE MY LEG!!!! OW! OW!!! OW!!! In the beginning, it would bring the neighbors running (though not me), but eventually even her friends would sigh and ignore her. She told me I "was unsympathetic" when she'd sustained a horrid jumping injury. I told her if she ever really broke something, I would be.

Two weeks later she broke her arm while ridign a scooter at a friend's boat 1 hour away. When I got he call and her her bellowing in the background, I told the mom (who wanted to take her to ER), that I'd come pick her up. They met me halfway (thinkng I was nuts, heartless or both). Well, guess what? It really was broken. Anyway, I was - true to my word - sympathetic ...but not until ER came back with a diagnosis. She was hollering just like she did with everything else.

Sigh.

Dash
 

AnnieO

Shooting from the Hip
Janet... Magic #7. Anything that ends in seven, must be true! LOL! Jett likes 57 and 87.

Yeah, Dash, I know... What to us is a mild, ignorable headache, to them is a migraine. I hope Onyxx never has a real migraine - she'd never survive!
 

DammitJanet

Well-Known Member
Well what got me was any dentist in this day and age who would pull a tooth that was infected. They refuse. Tony goes to a low cost clinic and it is over an hour away from us and when he got there the first time they took the xray's and immediately turned him around with rx for antibiotics and told him to come back at the end of the week. Dentists just wont take that chance.

oh yeah...she told me that this green pus stuff that was shooting out of her mouth had already entered her blood stream. LOL. I told her "oh gosh, that means you probably have sepsis and you should really be in the hospital hooked up to IV antibiotics because sepsis can kill you within hours!" Her answer...well the dentist office was closing for the night and didnt want to bother with transferring her to the hospital...lmao.

Im still trying to figure out how she managed to see green pus in her mouth. I cant see anything in my mouth when they are working on me. And her surgery which she described as using a saw was something they have done to me over and over again.
 

AnnieO

Shooting from the Hip
LOL Janet, hopefully she can find someone to feel sorry for her, because unless she's dead yet, I don't... Too many abscesses here... LOL! *snicker*

husband's coworker had to leave yesterday for a dental emergency at 10 AM. By the time I got there with our lunch at 12:20 he was back... They're doing a root canal, post and crown. He is on "heavy antibiotics and pain medications" - 500mg amoxicillin every 12 hours and 1000mg Tylenol every 8 hours - I managed to keep a straight face. Last time I was on antibiotics it was 1800mg amox every 6 hours, and I take 1000mg Tylenol every night to alleviate the carpal tunnel issues. (I'm allowed up to 4500mg a day, but...) I guess I've just had so many tooth problems... I call the dentist, they call me in amox, I go see them in a week or so. They know I know what I'm talking about.

So dash - how is she?
 

CrazyinVA

Well-Known Member
Staff member
Wow, this thread has really made me feel "better" about the hypochondriac-ness of my difficult children.

Another common complaint I've learned to decipher: "throwing/coughing up blood" or "peeing blood." This means there was a tinge of pink in something.

One of the most difficult things for me with Oldest when she was younger was that she really *does* have a chronic illness which is quite painful at times. She milked it for all it was worth though. What I learned was that quieter = more pain and truly ill. The louder she was, the less likely it was something serious enough to require hospitalization or surgical intervention. But there were times we were in the ER monthly, because I couldn't take a chance. Often times they did hospitalize her for pain control, and once she did need emergency surgery. But the majority of the time we were just sent home after a few hours and the co-pays racked up. Trying to figure out the difference between "crying wolf" and real Crohn's flare ups/blockages, was a challenge, that's for sure. Luckily she seems to have grown out of a lot of that behavior (and her Crohn's doesn't flare as often), and now takes herself to the ER if she feels it necessary without involving me. She just calls me afterward.. which is great progress in my book.

Youngest, different story. Still blows everything out of proportion, and still thinks I'm "mean" when I don't rush to help her. If I try to reassure her that something probably isn't as bad as she thinks it is, she says I don't care. Can't win.
 

AnnieO

Shooting from the Hip
Another common complaint I've learned to decipher: "throwing/coughing up blood" or "peeing blood." This means there was a tinge of pink in something.
Last time Onyxx got taken to the ER for puking up blood... She'd eaten tomato soup.
 

dashcat

Member
Well, I'm feeling much better now ...thanks to all of your hilarious stories! It amsues me to think that they really do not realize how silly they sound. Shooting pus? Puking blood? (LOL Step! - tomato soup!!).

When difficult child was a senior in HS, she was twisted her leg playing soccer. She limped and moaned and iced it as though she had gotten her leg caught in a vice. A few hours after soccer practice was over, she forgot about her injury and began walking normally. She went to a meeting with the youth group at church that night, returned home and acted perfectly normal. The following day, the youth director and the parish priest called e to see how she was and how things and gone when I'd taken her to ER (?) that night. A first I was baffled and then I remembered. She apparently writhed in pain througout the meeting, convincing them all her dedication to God was so great that she wouldn't consider missing youth group even though she might need to undergo amputation surgery in just a few short hours.
 
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