Our first week of syringe-free existence was maybe even more amazing than I had imagined. After getting all of Lemon's new pills, I stopped at Walgreen's on the way home to get a pill organizer. Yes, your read that sentence correctly, I stopped at a pharmacy on the way home from the pharmacy. Because we fill all our prescriptions at the children's hospital, which has the advantages of being covered by our insurance, close to Papa Bear's office, and staffed by generally competent people. While technically covered by our insurance, our local Walgreen's gets a lower mark for convenience and a downright abysmal grade for average staff competence. But, they do get an A+ for carrying everything else that you might need besides medicine. Anyhow, I digress.
Lemon is totally enamored of his pill organizer. The thrill of being able to swallow pills is still fresh. And it has little doors that you can open by pushing a button, blue for morning and purple for evening. Plus, it's a good opportunity to enforce concepts like "What day is it today?" and "What time of day is it?" You'd be amazed how easy it is to lose the thread of a week if you only get queried about it every 12 hours, so every interaction with the box has a sense of suspense. You never know what day might come next.
And no syringes. I can't even tell you. I should go back and find some of my old pictures of our stacks of syringes, but back in our heyday I think we were routinely doing 10 syringes a day. That's 10 syringes to load with stuff, 10 syringes to connect, disconnect, pull the plunger out of, wash, dry, reassemble, and refill, over and over again. Now, while I'm cooking dinner, Papa Bear sort of wanders around, standing vaguely between the stove, the refrigerator, and the utensil drawer, with his hands at his sides, wondering what it is that he's supposed to be doing. And the mornings are so smooth. No more trying to convince someone to sit still, lift his shirt, and cooperate. Just the old, "Hey, what day is it today? Well, what day was it yesterday? Does that have any relation to what day it might be today, and if so, what?" And then press the button, take a swig of water, and out the door. Heaven, straight up.
Lest a week should go by without a call from the school nurse, she gave me a holler on Friday. It was one of those "I don't want you to be alarmed, and I want you to know that we take head injuries very seriously" type of calls. Meaning Lemon had decided in his typical fashion to leave some aspect of the climbing structure on the playground without fully accounting for the effects of gravity, and taken a pretty good hit to the bridge of his nose. Aside from a nice scrape he seems none the worse for wear.
Other than that, I did a little racing on Sunday morning. It was a glorious morning for running, and it's funny how just a quick trip to a town a couple of counties over can feel like a grand adventure! I really should get out more.
