Chelsea started her new job a couple of weeks ago. She is supposed to work from 8am-4pm, but things always seem to happen at the end of the day (appts that take longer than expected, emergencies, etc) so she never gets home before 5:30-6:00. LONG days for a young girls first job. Plus she occasionally has to work Saturdays, and they alternate going in on Sundays to care for any animals being boarded or who are hospitalized (she did the full weekend on her first week). Lunchtime is supposed to be at noon, but there are many days things happen and she doesn't get lunch until 1 or 2pm. She's learned to take granola bars or crackers or something and have them in her pocket to nibble on through the morning. It's an extremely busy office, very fast paced and a higher than normal stress environment.
Yesterday she called me from the vet office to get more information on our new dog for his file before his appointment next week and I thought she seems really quiet, but figured she's at work so no big deal. But you know how as a mom...you just "feel" that something isn't quite right? Well, that's the feeling I had, but chalked it up to being neurotic and over-protective. (Who me???)
Last night she got home around 6pm and she didn't look good at all and she was holding her stomach. After talking about it, she agreed to go to the ER (in case it was her appendix). They checked her blood, urine, did a cat scan of her whole abdominal area and had her drink a GI cocktail (been there, done that...not fun. YUCK!). The results of everything came back totally normal (thank goodness!). The cocktail helped as the doctor said he suspected it would and diagnosed her with Gastritis and said it was a precursor to an ulcer. I couldn't help but want to grab her up and wrap her in my arms again like I did when she was little. I wanted to protect her from the big bad world and whatever was stressing her out. But I sat there in the chair and stayed totally silent while the doctor talked to her. He would ask her questions and she would look at me and I had to bite my tongue and say "Your 18 now, you can answer" and I'd give her a smile or a wink to let her know that I'm still here for her.
He gave her prescription strength pepcid and the usual speech regarding stress and greasy foods. On the way home I said "Stress is something you are going to have to deal with for the rest of your life. There's no way to avoid it. What you have to do is to figure out how you're going to deal with it in the right way. I can't tell you what is stressing you because what might cause me stress may be no big deal for you, and the other way around. You have to figure it out for yourself. Then you have to find how to deal with that stress or stresses or you need to eliminate them. You're 18 and on your way to an ulcer. That's not cool." She said "I know" and we left it at that.
This morning I called her boss and explained that she didn't get home until after midnite and isn't feeling well. She said no problem let her come in whenever she can, so I'll let her sleep for a while and then see how she feels.
When Jay heard all this he said "Gee, wonder who's daughter she could be?" hhhmmmm.....wonder what he meant by that?
No comments:
Post a Comment