"Drugs and Vomit...But SO Not Rock n' Roll"

If there is an inverse to a 'Rock n' Roll' lifestyle, then yesterday is proof that I am living it. One of the scary things about life and getting older in general, are the ways in which you find yourself scraping 'the bottom of the barrel', convinced you've hit rock bottom - then reeling in shock some time later when you manage to outdo yourself and hit a new all-time low.

I pondered this yesterday when I found myself crouched on the side of a busy London street, being raced to my dental surgery and dosed up on enough Valium to knock out a horse.   In clumsy desperation I was attempting to rid my firstborn of the avalanche of vomit he had moments before chucked up all over himself in a bout of car sickness. Using little squares of wet wipes, and being heavily sedated, meant that most of my efforts were in vain.   

As the pile of soiled wipes continued to build up beside me, and my half-naked child stood shivering in the early evening breeze, I wondered if things could get much worse. Furthermore, I had my husband admonishing me from the front seat for not having brought a change of clothes for the boys, while I was mumbling a retort to the effect that if he had not been chattering on his mobile while driving, then perhaps he might have been able to pull over a few seconds earlier and spared us this disaster. 

Anyone who knows me knows of my horrific needle phobia - I.V. being the worst of it (and the reason I've foolishly opted for 'natural childbirth' twice in a row). Given the complexity of the procedure and having been warned that I would need to be heavily sedated, I had panicked, taken matters into my own hands and had ingested enough valium to keep myself from freaking out.  Turns out I was right to have done so...

What I hadn't counted on of course was the palaver of having to find an emergency babysitter for the monsters, renting a car and organising a trip across London in heavy traffic during rush hour.  In the end our tenants did us a favour by watching the boys, but we were incredibly shamefaced as Egg and Dumps were hurriedly deposited at their front door, semi-naked, reeking of vomit, and clutching a bag of toys containing the odd morsel of - you guessed it - vomit.

Smelling also faintly of vomit, a short while later I found myself worryingly alert and questioning the skills of my female oral surgeon.  I heard her tell her assistant, "I don't get paid enough for this kind of thing", as they 'oohed and aaahed' about how difficult it was extracting the root and the metal instrument which had been left inside my jaw. 

I tried to signal that a little more sedation wouldn't go amiss, as I didn't particularly want to be privy to all their nervous twittering and general befuddlement.  But of course they totally ignored me, and all I could do was focus on the rather prominent brown moustache nestled on my surgeons upper lip, while willing the surgery to be over.  (I had just begun the laborious process of counting the individual hairs in an effort to distract myself from the obvious butchering that was taking place on my jaw, when they turned off the equipment and announced it was all over.)

In the end, I didn't have to stay in Recovery for an hour as previously told, as it was clear to all and sundry that I was incredibly alert for someone who had just been sedated.  I was released almost immediately since I passed the 'walk in a straight line' test with flying colours (that's nerves for you).  Thank God I had had the sense to administer my own 'medicine' beforehand or I don't know how I would have coped.

This morning I awoke early to intense pain in my jaw, a blood soaked ball of gauze by my bedside and the faint whiff of vomit and urine permeating through the house. Thankfully the latter was not due to my own bodily shortcomings, but my children's clothes from the previous day.

Curiously, unbeknownst to myself, my husband had decided that yesterday was a good day to try out Dumpie in a pair of 'big boy pants' for the first time instead of nappies, and so predictably Dumpie had responded by soaking himself just as we were trying to hustle ourselves out the door.

So it was no surprise then this morning to see that the urine and vomit soaked articles still lay where they had been unceremoniously tossed the night before. Nor was it a surprise to see that no one had thought of removing the offending articles.

And did I mention that our washing machine broke two days ago?

Words escape me...