The new Dell Children's Hospital is quite nice. Ask me how I know.

Pretty, isn't it? This place just opened up maybe two weeks or so ago. What we used to have was the Children's Hospital as part of another, larger hospital in the Seton network, but now we have this place, which is, from top to bottom, dedicated to children. State of the art, with all the bells and whistles. And what's really cool is that being so brand spanking new, it is still relatively unsullied by years of bodily fluids and aerosolized germs. This makes ME, the certified germ-phobe, embarassingly happy.

You would think that I, being a complete basket case around germiness, would go out of my way to avoid places that might harbor anything remotely contagious. BUT! Germ-phobe? Yes, I am. Basket case? Most of the time, yes. Clinically phobic? Yep! Plain old neurotic as hell? Hell, yes! Mommy? YES! I am a mommy. And for my daughter I will go into what might possibly be a hotbed (quite literally!) of seething contagion and plague.

Zoe needed a hospital yesterday.

It all started innocently enough. Last Thursday, she said her parts itched. ("Parts" being a euphemistic term I'm sure you all understand.) I called her doctor, and because it didn't hurt her to pee, we decided to take her in on Monday morning. Saturday rolls around, and about 11 that morning, she runs into the bathroom to pee, and we hear a piercing scream. Guess what? It hurts to pee. And apparently, it doesn't just hurt, it HURTS. Being a family of one parent who immediately runs to a doctor at the first sign of illness, and one parent who considers seeing a doctor only when you can actually SEE BONE, we naturally decided to carry on with our day and see what happened. What happened was that during during our trip to the bookstore, she and I spent about 20 minutes in the bathroom, with me trying to convince her to please pee while she screamed like I was dunking her head in the toilet. At lunch, she continued to clutch at her nether regions and yell about how it hurt.

"Hospital!" says one parent, and amazingly, the other agrees. We stopped at home to get Walter.

(Because Walter can make many bad things better.) We also picked up a change of clothes, some changes of underwear, some books to read, including the new Harry Potter that we'd just bought because we're huge, unabashed geeks, and a binkie. Off to the new hospital we go.

They got us into a room pretty quickly, but not after a very loudly objected-to collection of her vital signs. Getting a read on her heart rate, weight and blood oxygenation went relatively smoothly, but getting a temperature was a whole different story. In the end, that's how she got it: in the end. And she hated that.

The whole story is very long, and I won't bore you with all the details except these few: at one point, we requested a urine sample from her--she needed to pee in a cup. She didn't want to, but finally agreed to try, so she and I trekked off to the bathroom with a sample cup and a bunch of little cotton pads for me to use to "clean the area" if you know what I mean. Now, I have this really weird way of helping Zoe out when she's having difficulties with peeing (like when she was younger and still afraid of toilets, too.) I will sit on the toilet myself, waaay toward the back, and she sits between my legs with her bottom over the hole (make sense?) That way, I can hold onto her, hug her, whatever she needs, and she's supported. That's how we sat in the bookstore potty, too. Anyway, we sat like that in the hospital bathroom while I got the specimen jar open, set it on the sink, and started to clean off her parts. After one quick swipe, she yells, "I'M GOING TO PEE!" and this enormous FOUNTAIN of urine jets across the room. I can feel my thighs getting warm, and try desperately to get to the specimen cup in time to catch some of the fountain, and the very SECOND I have it in my hand. . . it stops. All done. Pee everywhere. And because she has an infection of some sort, it is very, very SMELLY pee. All over my pants. So Zoe is crying, and I'm calling a nurse, and we go back to the room to wait awhile. They tried to bring me something to change into: size 10/12 GIRLS sweats. Yeah, I could get them on, but looked like a sausage in a too-small casing. I put the pee-pee pants back on and dealt with the aroma.

Yes, we had to catheterize her. It was an ordeal I hope never to see the likes of again--to see terror like that on the face of your child makes your heart break, even though you know you're doing it to help her get better. Because she doesn't understand, and you know she's wondering why Mommy and Daddy aren't helping her.

We got a prescription for antibiotics, as she has what the doctor said was a VERY serious infection going on. We got her home and put her back into diapers, since she's holding her urine to avoid the pain of peeing, and it tends to build up and then come out before she can even do anything about getting to a bathroom. I suspect she's taking advantage of this, though, and getting back into the big girl underwear might be a bit of a struggle. For the first few hours after we got home, she continued to holler and cry about the pain, but it is slowly improving. We've gotten a billion videos from the store, put plastic sheets on the couch, and are trying to stuff her full of juice and water and yogurt, which she is smart enough to know will fill her bladder and make her want to pee, so it's sort of a challenge. (She actually says that! "This will make my bladder full, and I'll have to pee! Is an extra smart kid a blessing or a curse? I still vote for blessing, at this point. We'll see how it goes when she's 15.) She also managed to pee on Zach's shirt, and all the underwear we brought for her. Talent, I tell you! TALENT!

So speaking of talent! The summer performance of Dance Discovery was last weekend, and we took some photos. The unfortunate part is that my ability to take photos in darkness is virtually nil, as it turns out, so many of the actual performance photos utterly suck. But you'll get the basic feel of it all. I'm not a good photo journalist.

Surprisingly, she was quite un-jittery before we left for the theatre. At rehearsals a day before, she had, upon her opening move, knocked the ears off of her head, promptly started crying, and sat out the entire performance. Her teacher suggested that we go backstage afterwards, and trade her ears for another set that would "fit better" even though they were exactly the same, and that seemed to do that trick. (That, and a pair of bobby pins.)

Channeling Bob Fosse, Zoe wears a stunning little shift made by her selfless and adoring mother over black tights and leotard, just before departure.

I like feeling useful. I like having a performing kid. I like my kid. I liked pinning her ears to her head. They were performing a scene from CATS this year, and Zoe's group danced to the song "Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer." The costumes were quite simple, as you can see, but they were still really cute.

Mungojerrie or Rumpleteazer
or
The Most Beautiful Cat Ever!

Yeah, I'm her mom and only slightly biased--but isn't she just adorable? Of course she is! She knows it, too.

So before the performance, I sat in the audience (behind a bunch of people with huge heads) and tried at the last minute how to figure out how to keep the flash from going off. I did figure out how to get the camera to work at 1200 speed, and as it turns out, I guess that automatically shuts off the flash. Unfortunately, I had the camera set to the wrong lighting conditions. Crap. Anyway, here they are. And no, we weren't sitting a mile away. It just looks like it.

Looks like I took it with one of those little detachable-flash Kodak instamatics that takes 110 film cartridges from back in the 70's, doesn't it? Nope. Hellishly expensive digital SLR. Jesus.

The bigger girl over Zoe's right shoulder is my therapist's daughter, by the way. (Zoe is dead center, by the way. Next to the girl in the jarringly pink outfit.)

Ugh. Blogger keeps flipping me off. I'd better publish this before I get completely kicked off. Next post: our mini-vacation to South Padre Island. I took three whole pictures! And also the wildlife sanctuary. The fun is neverending in Texas.