Hamthrax Vax: A Saga in Four Parts

Preface:
This is long and probably boring, but I need to get it out of my system. For some reason, this has just dominated my brain, and I need to spit it all out.

I: Part the First, Wherein We Question the Necessity and/or Safety of the H1N1 Vaccine

So when I first heard about the H1N1 vaccine I thought that probably Charlotte didn't need it. She doesn't go to day care, she's a healthy child, etc, etc. But after doing some thinking and reading some articles, Matt and I decided that we did want to do it. Matt is a very hard-scientist thought process kind of guy, and a strong believer in herd immunity. And I started thinking about my baby nephew, and my sister the elementary school teacher, and how we spend a lot of time at the library and how we just got a membership to the Holyoke Children's Museum, and how those 19 otherwise healthy kids died from H1N1, and so Matt and I did decide to get the H1N1 vax for Char. Easier said than fucking done, thank you very much.

There was further debate on whether to get the inactivated virus injection, or the live virus nasal mist. Originally I leaned towards the mist, mostly for ease and because I was a little concerned about the heavy metal content of the inactive injection. I know that there was mercury in the majority of those, but I couldn't find any info how much. Researching this whole issue is a nightmare. No agency in charge wants to actually say, "Yeah, you know what, mercury is a poison but we use it in the injection." You get a lot of articles that say, "Mercury was proven not to cause autism, just get the shot!" Which missed the point of my concerns entirely. Matt and I agreed, after both our research, to get Charlotte the nasal mist version of the vaccine as soon as it was available. Which it wasn't and wasn't and wasn't. Our pediatrician's office has a pretty comprehensive website with a section I thought of as "Vax Watch '09." As soon as the vaccine was available, they'd post times for the clinic.

II: Fist-fights and The Lottery: The First Attempt

Finally, the first full week of November, the H1N1 vaccine (hereafter referred to as Hamthrax Vax, or just "the vax") became available at Charlotte's peds practice. There were to be H1N1 clinics from noon to 1 every day, with evening clinics from 5:30 to 7:00 Tuesday to Saturday. Charlotte and I showed up at 5:40 on Tuesday night. There was a police office in the parking lot, directing traffic. I later found out that there had been a "scuffle" at the noon clinic that day, so the police officer could have been there as a squelching presence, as well. After waiting in line for maybe 15 minutes, a woman came out to say that there were numbers being distributed and that the wait at the end of the line was going to be at least 90 minutes, considering that they averaged a minute a vaccine. I was totally prepared to wait, except for the fact that a) I didn't have a snack for Charlotte and dinner was coming and b) I had forgotten to put the stroller in the car, so Charlotte would have to stand with me in a dark parking lot for two hours. After a teleconference with Matt, we decided that we would try our luck the next day, coming armed with stroller, snacks, and activities.

III: Friday Night Lights: Preparation is for Naught, and We Are Turned Away Again

After I posted my vax fail on Facebook, a number of people suggested that we try calling and scheduling an appointment to get the vax for Charlotte. I was pretty sure our practice wasn't doing that, that they were just doing the clinics, but we decided it was worth a try, and Matt called the office. They told him that they were only doing the hamthrax vax via clinic, and that they were dividing their remaining supply into three days, and that the first third of the alphabet could come on Wednesday, the second third on Thursday, and the last third on Friday. Our last name starting with V, we planned on the Friday clinic.

At this point, our preference had changed from the live vax via the mist to the inactive vax injection. Charlotte had gotten a live vax for the seasonal flu, and she had gotten a mild case of the flu from it. Fever, vomiting, lethargy, the whole nine yards. Also, I heard a radio story on NPR discussing the vaccination, and that the amount of mercury in the injection is about the same amount you would get from one serving of tuna. Considering that I have not eaten tuna since the last time it was forced on me (probably, oh, 25 years or so) and Charlotte has never had it, I am pretty sure that she has no mercury built up in her body, and the amount from this one injection is totally an acceptable risk, in the opinions of myself and her father. Especially considering our concerns that since she got sick from the last live vax, she might get this illness too.

Charlotte and I were in line. I had her hat & mittens, and she was in her stroller playing with her Hello Kitty. A nurse/office manager/whatever came out with a sign that the clinic was closed and an announcement: "All healthy children from 2 to 5 years of age, we're asking you to come to a clinic on Sunday from noon til four. Unless you already have a number, or are asthmatic or under 2, you will most likely not get a vaccine today." I started to get really, really pissed at this point.

"Excuse me," I said. "I was told specifically to come today so that my two year old daughter to get a vaccine."

"Yes, well," she said. "We're asking that otherwise health children over two come back on Sunday."

"Is that for the live virus mist?" I asked. "Because I really want her to get the inactive vaccine. The injection."

(Pay attention, because this is important.)

"Oh yes," she said. "I understand. We only give the live virus to children over three."

"Just to be sure," I said. "She'll still be able to get the injection on Sunday?" This is the most forceful I get with medical authority. Even office staff. I am just uncomfortable arguing with medical people.

"Right," she sighed. "If she's two, she can get the injection." She then raised her voice again and repeated her announcement to the parking lot. "If you are here for a healthy child between the ages of 2 and 5, please come back on Sunday. Only under two and asthmatics tonight." Charlotte and I left, with a little tears on both our parts. Charlotte had visions of fishtanks and chalkboard tables dancing in her head (ah, the waiting room) and I was exhausted from trying to deal with this scheduling nightmare.


IV: Lying Liars and the Lies they Tell; Plus, a Mean Nurse

Sunday rolls around, and Matt and I are both taking Charlotte to the pediatrician's office, with stroller, snack, toys, and two parents. This way one person can stay in line and one person can chase toddler. We arrived at the office at 11:20, before the clinic started, but not quite first in line. Charlotte was kid #9, family #8. I chatted with other parents while Matt helped Char on a little climbing/play structure in the courtyard. A woman two people behind me was back for her third time, too. The woman behind me said that her husband brought her son Friday night, but had to leave.

As the line inched forward, we got to go in the office and check in. The two people in front of me I both got info sheets on the flu mist. I saw a folder labled "Flu Mist Facts." I got a sinking feeling in my stomach that the only available option was going to be the live flu mist vax. When I got to the receptionist, I asked her if there was any injection. She said no, today was the mist only. I told her that on Friday I had been told that she would be able to get the injection today. She gave me a blank look, and just said, "No."

"Uh. You see, the last time she got a live vaccine, she got sick from it."

"Hmm. That's very rare," said the receptionist.

"Right, that's why I'm concerned. And that's why I asked on Friday and was told that I could still get her the injection today."

"Well, we don't have any and we're not doing it today. We are supposed to get 400 more doses sometime this week. And if you watch the website, we'll post information about another clinic."

I called over Matt and did a quick conference, thoroughly aware of the hundred people at my back every second I took. We decided to just go for it, since this has already been three days of rigmarole. We took our number, 8, and then went in to the waiting room so that Charlotte could watch the fish, color on the table, and torture other small children by totally crowding their personal space. I chatted with another Mom whose family had been on the same schedule as us - their last name starts with S, so he had also shown up on Friday and was told to come back on Saturday. He found out that what happened was that they had so few people show on Wednesday and Thursday that they opened Friday for everyone. Her husband had been ready to dump the practice after that, and so was Matt when he heard that story. I have had two years of great experiences there, but I was pretty damn disappointed.

Our number was called, and we were ushered into exam room #13 with a woman who was a nurse? PA? med tech? I have no idea, but let's call her a nurse just for the sake of this story. Let's call her Nurse Ratched. That's an exaggeration, but she was really unpleasant. She took our information, asked if we had any questions. I repeated the fact that we were concerned about Charlotte contracting a mild case of the H1N1, and asked again what we should be looking for. She sighed and said, "Fever, vomiting, lethargy. Okay?" Matt and I exchanged looks, but then we got down to business.

Matt put Charlotte on his lap, and held down her arms. Once Nurse Ratched started coming towards Charlotte and reaching for her nose, Charlotte started squirming. One hand got free. "I need you to hold her! There are a lot of people out there, and I need this to go as quickly as possible!" Nurse Ratched barked.

We kind of just stared. I'm still feeling my heart thump. I have never been spoken to like that by a medical person before - EVER. Charlotte started crying. "It's not going to hurt!" Nurse Ratched crabbed, advancing.

I stepped up. "Look," I said calmly. "She was just here two weeks ago to have something pulled out of her nose with really big tweezers. She's very sensitive about her nose right now, and she's clearly scared." To Nurse Ratched's credit, her face softened, and she did take a step back.

"Oh, well," she huffed. "It's not gonna hurt, okay?" she said softly. Matt pinned Charlotte down more, and I helped hold her head. Poor Charlotte sobbed afterwards, just totally sad about the whole thing. After that, Nurse Ratched made a hasty retreat.

Matt and I walked out of the room, and I looked at his face. "I know you're pissed," I said. "We'll write a letter, let's just go, okay?"

Epilogue: What to do, what to do?

So. Mission accomplished, but with only a qualified success. Yes, Charlotte did get the Hamthrax Vax, but not the way we wanted, and with a really disappointing experience at the office. Matt is ready to break up with them, but I'm not. I really wanted to come back to Nurse Ratched and say, "Hey, I know you want to get through this quickly, but this is my fucking third time here within a week to get this damn shot, and you may be pissed at how long we're taking, but I'm pissed at how fucked up this is. And you didn't make these decicions, so I didn't bring it up, but if you're gonna bitch at me, I'm gonna bitch at you." But I didn't. And it seethed in both Matt and me all day. I think my original instinct is the best - I am going to write to the office. I'm debating about whether or not to include the nurse incident and the nurse's name, or just address the whole "Come back another day. No, come back another day. Yes, we'll still have the injection availabe. No, only the mist." Matt was pissed because he didn't remember the nurse's name, but I do. I'm just so bummed. It's like when I found out my stepsister's otherwise awesome husband doesn't believe in gay marriage, and in fact doesn't really like gay people.

Okay, maybe not as bad as that. But close.


Preface:
(pictures are from this morning, before all the drama!)

Flying solo.

I have a lot of stuff in my head right now, but not a lot to post about. Today Matt is at a Patriot's game, having been invited by a friend who got tickets from a friend, who got them from a friend. They are good seats, with access to a luxury box, so Matt was pretty thrilled. He's off having a great time, and I'm happy for him, but I'm a little frustrated and tired. I'm likely going to be by myself with Charlotte all day, without the car, and some days that's just a little overwhelming.

Charlotte and I spend 4 days a week by ourselves, no problem, but on the weekend it's a different routine, and I expect and anticipate having the extra help. Or being able to say, "Dude, I need a nap and a shower, hang out with the kid, okay?" Plus, I feel bad for Charlotte. It sucks when your mom is phoning it in, and today, that's how I feel. Charlotte's napping right now, but I know she'll be up soon, and I have soooo much to do for Christmas still that I know I'm going to have to stick her in the play yard and work around her. I feel guilty for that, but I don't have time to put this stuff off, either.

Blah. I need a vacation. Not from Charlotte, but from everything else. If only I could wake up tomorrow with no work and a clean house. Someone send a fairy godmother, 'kay?



In Holly Jolly news, we went to a family Christmas party last week (like last year) and Charlotte again got to sit on Santa's lap. She didn't actually cry, but she was very concerned/interested in this dude. She couldn't take her eyes off of him. Even when she got her present and we took her to the back of the room to open it, she was still craning her neck and trying to see what he was doing with the other kids.



Santa gave her a Minnie Mouse toy, which would not have been my first thought, but Charlotte absolutely adores her Mo-mo. I don't think she's ever seen Minnie before - it's not like Winnie The Pooh, where we have a lot of stuff with him and Tigger on it. She recognizes Pooh, Tigger and Elmo when she sees them in different places, but Minnie is her first Disney Mouse, and there is something about her that Charlotte finds very appealing. They've been inseparable all this week, and Mo-mo is oft requested by name, which is unusual for Charlotte.

Another fun thing at the party was Charlotte hanging out with my youngest cousin, Chelsea, who is seven. Chelsea and I are the cousin brackets - at 29, I'm the oldest, and she's the youngest. Chelsea was chasing around Charlotte, with Matt or I following as back-up. After five minutes, Chelsea looked at me and said, "Playing with Charlotte is fun, but she never stops moving! And she always wants to touch things she's not supposed to!" This is a lesson that the youngest daughter and youngest granddaughter never had to learn before, and it was pretty funny.



It was a great party, I enjoyed myself, and I enjoyed seeing my grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and relatives who I don't know who they are. It was awkward and weird in some ways, though - my dad wasn't there. He's never there, since my stepmother and my dad's family had a fight over 10 years ago. And as much as I am kind of over the whole thing, it still hurts and sucks to see Dad's siblings all joking together and helping the family set up, and to know that Dad isn't there because he doesn't want to deal with it. It sucks that Dad isn't there to say, "Oh, Jenn, this is Uncle Joe, remember him? He's the one who used to tease Gramma about going for a ride on his motorcycle!" Me and my sister just kind of wander aimlessly, not knowing what we should offer to do. It doesn't help that my whole family is kinda bad at communicating, to the point that one year we showed up at a party only to find out that we were supposed to be dressed nicely for a family photo. Dad, who had been the one to relay the party invite, neglected to mention this. We thought it was just a regular cook-out, and were wearing t-shirts and jean shorts. It ended up being no big deal, we all stood in the back, but it was just one more thing to make us feel alienated.

At this party, my uncle told me and Nicole that he had talked to our dad on the phone that morning, and we both said, in unison, "That's nice." He realized from that response that we hadn't heard from him in a while - and Uncle Scott felt bad. The whole thing is such a big mess, and I don't even really care to untangle it. I could go on and on for hours about it, and it would make even less sense. I'm just really sensitive to it at this time of year, with all the sentimentality and obligation and true joy and dread that Christmas means to me.

Shaking that all off....

I'm really looking forward to Christmas with Charlotte - I know that she's getting some fun toys, and I can't wait to see her play with them. We've been really lax about leaving her presents around, banking on the fact that she's 14 1/2 months old, and won't really notice that the See N Say in the box in our room is going to be unwrapped on Christmas morning. However, Charlotte has noticed and remembered said See N Say, and she likes to come in our room and stand in front of it. I think she's trying to figure out why we have something that is so obviously for her in a box in our room. She's going to lose it when she realizes that it actually makes noises!

I'm trying to decide if I want to take her out in the snow for a few minutes. I think I'm going to wuss out - it's such a pain to get us both all ready to go. Maybe tomorrow before Matt goes to work we'll take her out for a minute. She really likes the process of getting ready to go out, thank god. Charlotte loves her coat ("co") and her mittens and her hat ("ha") and thinks the snow ("no") is funny.

One last picture of Charlotte - her new thing is climbing, and she's figured out how to pile up things to use them to stand on. In this picture, you can see that she totally thinks she's going to be able to swing her leg over the side of the play yard and make her escape. Not true.

Birthdaygate '08; or, The Family Drama Never Ends

As usual, I have some family drama. I don't know if it's better or worse now that I have a kid - on the one hand, the situation with my father's immediate family has gotten worse, but I care less. On the other hand, the little bits of constant in-law drama are much, much worse. And I DO care about that, and since we are much more involved with my in-laws than my father, it is kinda a big deal.

The current family issue is a little something I'm calling Birthdaygate '08. The background on this is that my in-laws go on vacation twice a year - they have a time share in Hawaii, and they get a favorable exchange rate on their weeks. This means that on years they don't go to Hawaii, they can trade for weeks in time shares in other places. I don't exactly get it, but let's just say that instead of going to Hawaii this year they went to Florida for a week in April, and they are going to Arizona and Mexico for two weeks this fall.

Last year they went to Florida in the fall and it was a huge deal around the time that I was in and out of the hospital and being monitored all the time because we were all afraid that they were going to induce me on vacation and they had Red Sox tickets. I'm not saying that they would miss the birth of their grandchild for the Red Sox, because that is mean. What I'm saying is that there was a lot of concern and pressure that they might have to give up their tickets and try and get an earlier flight due to all the maybe-they-will-maybe-they-won't induction nonsense surrounding Charlotte's birth. I managed to bargain with my OB practice for an extra weekend and went in to be induced on Sunday the 23rd of September, and got to go to my baby shower and also insure that my in-laws would be back in the state before the baby actually made it to the outside world.

Also, all the drama around the christening was also complicated by the fact that we wanted to have it the last Sunday of April, but that had to be rescheduled due to the spring Florida trip and Red Sox tickets. Which was fine, we weren't exactly prepared in April anyway...but it would have been a lot easier to have had the christening and party in April since I wasn't working at the time.

I tell you all that so that I can tell you this.

There is now a ton of drama surrounding the putative date of Charlotte's first birthday party. Her birthday is September 24th, a Wednesday, if I recall correctly. (She was born on a Monday and this year is a leap year, so that makes sense.) Matt and I don't want to actually have her party until on or after her birthday. Since Wednesday is in the middle of the week, we'd like to have her birthday the following Saturday. However, Matt's parents leave for vacation that weekend, to be gone for two whole weeks. This means that the next available weekend is in the middle of October, which is their other grandchild's birthday (Charlotte's cousin K). The weekend after THAT, fully one month after Charlotte's first birthday, is my brother's wedding, and we'll be spending the weekend in Syracuse. So, unless we want to have Charlotte's birthday party in NOVEMBER, at which point we start interfering with all her grandparents' birthdays, we need to have her birthday party when we want to have it, that weekend right after her birthday.

The controversy arises from a couple of things - firstly, that Matt and I STUPIDLY stated that we don't want to have Charlotte's birthday party before her birthday because it makes us uncomfortable, and that there are a number of world cultures that back us upon this tradition (esp. Puerto Rico and Hawaii, as I recall). The other factor is that my mom is going to be travelling the weekend before Charlotte's birthday, so that is two strikes against it. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Because the in-laws have grabbed onto this, and are saying that we place a stupid superstition above them.

Phone calls and emails have been exchanged on the topic, and silly arguments, such as "We are more than twice your age and know of no civilized culture with that kind of superstition." This fills me with fury because their son-in-law was raised in Hawaii, and they go there all the time, and therefore their grandson is of that descent, and they apparently don't consider that civilized. Lovely. Then Matt and his mother got to have the whole exchange where Matt's mom said, "We told you we were going on vacation! You know we go on vacation on the fall! You've known for six months!" Matt retorted, "You've known her birthday for almost a year!"

The whole situation is made that much more complicated by the fact that none of this is in a vacuum - Matt's older sister and their parents have a relationship that is strained at times, and there are feelings that his sister punished his parents by keeping their grandson away from them. I don't think this is the case - except maybe as a form of self-protection, but that's the feeling that is there, and that kind of underscores every decision we make in regards to the grandparents. "Well, they didn't get to do this with K," Matt will say, and I will say, "That has nothing to do with Charlotte."

A dangerous precedent has been set. Because Matt feels like he needs to make up for what is interpreted as various slights on his sister's part, we've bent over backwards to accomodate them over and over. Unfortunately, they see it as their due, not as something special that we're doing for them. As a result, whenever our opinions diverge from theirs, they take it as a personal insult, and an added layer of "ungrateful child."
I don't need this from 2 out of 3 sets of parents - this sucks. Every time there is something special, a holiday, a christening, a birthday, we have to way out the needs of 3 different sets of grandparents, in the interest of fairness, and our preferences get pushed to the end of the list. It's easy to do that, because right now Charlotte's little, and she seriously doesn't care what happens as long as she has Mumma and Daddy with her. She doesn't know that her christening got re-arranged, that her maternal grandfather constantly chooses his second family over her, and that her paternal grandparents will never be happy with her parent's decisions. So it's easy to try and make everyone happy while wearing ourselves down to a nubbin.

But enough is enough. We are her parents, and we are allowed to decide what to do based on whatever we want. We also have to be prepared to weather the storm based on our decisions, and that's a little hard to deal with. I guess that's what it really means to grow up.