Well, things might just be getting back to normal. I don’t think I’ll go too crazy into details about the last couple of weeks but at least I’ll cover the basics. It all started really on the Friday evening before the wife and I’s anniversary.
I came home from work per usual and was very happy that I’d have the next two days off for the first time since Golden Week. And of course, an anniversary to celebrate with the wife along with a date with the wife for the first time in over a year and three months. The wife however complained about the beginnings of another (in a recent succession of) ear infections. It wasn’t too bad and we started off the next day as planned by headed to Ikebukuro to drop off the boy at the g-parents’ place. However, it seemed the wife’s ear infection was getting worse and worse. I’d told her maybe we should go to the 耳鼻科 in the morning but I think she was trying to be a trooper so we didn’t and really when we finally made it to lunch it was pretty much all downhill from there. She couldn’t eat much, we ended up buying some Tylenol and sitting around before we finally went home and sat around in the dark the rest of the day while she slept on the couch and I slept on the floor. Wahoo, great anniversary. So the boy came back via the g-ma in the evening and eventually we all went to bed. I was pretty heart-broken because I’d been waiting for and begging for a day with no baby for so looooong and it was a total shit. The next day however, was truly a heart-breaker.
Somewhere around 5am or so, the Tylenol that the wife’d been taking apparently wore off and she realized that she had a terrible headache, pretty much debilitating. She couldn’t move. Long story short, her mom came over again and we started calling around for a cab to take mornin to the hospital with no luck and finally called for an ambulance and I stayed home with the boy while the wife and her mom headed off. I kept in contact with ママ through the day and we learned that it wasn’t an ear infection but rather Cerebral Meningitis. Which, is a bitch. If you don’t know, it’s basically an inflammation of the brain and can be fatal. ママ came over and I could finally go to the hospital and see the wife and she was not really looking good. It was a Sunday so the hospital couldn’t do all the tests they really needed so we were going to be doing some waiting but at least we knew that it was going to be at least two weeks before she’d be home. SOB. It could be up to a month or more. F. Anyway, the first day I went around and got her some of the stuff she’d be needing and then I headed home to get the boy ready because we’d decided that he’d be spending a fair amount of time at the g-parents’ over the next 2-4 weeks. The first night he headed over by himself and I stayed home to get some stuff done around here.
Anyway, pretty much the next 12 days or so saw me running around (and sometimes carrying the boy in-tow), between our place, the in-laws’ place, the hospital and of course my schools. I spent a few nights in Ikebukuro but that place does not agree with my health so… that sucked. At the same time the wife was spending a lot of time being poked and prodded with CTs, and MRIs and cardiograms and lumbar punctures and all that jazz… poor girl. After the first few days the doctors got some tests back that told them what bacteria they were dealing with and luckily it is a common one so they knew how to attack it. The basic theory of what happened was that a bacteria from one of the ear infections she’d had over the past few month had escaped from her inner ear through some kind of gap and had migrated to her brain… There were many worst case scenarios bounding around (surgery on her skull to repair the gaps was one of the more terrible sounding, luckily the Doc said that they would probably heal naturally) but we were fortunate that things went fairly smooth.
She was put on some serious IVs for the first week and then she was mostly clear after that but got an ocassional one for the next week and finally she got the ‘OK’ Thursday night that she could go home Friday morning. Of course I had to work but I offered to go get her in the morning before work but instead her dad went… one of the slowest humans on Earth… and by the time they got to the house, I got to see her for 5 minutes before I had to leave. But she got to see MJ for the first time in over a week (because we found out his vaccines were not complete because he was sick around the time of his first birthday and so they got postponed so we decided he couldn’t go back to the hospital) and that was good. I didn’t go over to the house on Friday after work because I couldn’t risk another sleepless, lung crushing night there before an early (and busy as shit) Saturday. I was super busy at work for the entire two weeks she was gone which was really exhausting but also work was the easiest part of my week… When I finished work on Saturday, I found out that MJ had a little fever so she thought it was best to stay at her folks’ place that night… F. I went home. So, finally, today I went over and got them and finally, finally, finally we all came home today.
Man, it’s been a super long two weeks. And I’ve gotta go back to work again tomorrow. I’m still pretty exhausted but incredibly happy to have a semblance of normalcy back. It’s not gonna be back to status quo for another few weeks as the wife is still not 100% but at least she doesn’t need to stay in the hospital anymore. I’m so happy they are home and hopefully we’ll all be fairly happy and healthy for a good long while… Welcome back! 
