In Which Much Drama Occurs

Well, today was a rather dramatic day.

I spent the first two hours of the morning with the real estate agent and the plumber up at the new house getting a hose bib replaced on an outside faucet. It took rather longer than expected because whoever put in the original hose bib apparently encased the whole copper pipe in concrete. I'm told this is not a good idea. Anyway, the plumber eventually extracted the pipe and put in a new one, but the extra time it took caused us to leave for the airport in a bit of a rush. Hopefully I didn't forget anything important.

We got to the airport with plenty of time to spare, and stood in the long security line for a while. Connor and I always end up being searched separately because of the fact that the wheelchair won't exactly fold up and fit through the x-ray machine, so while my mother-in-law gathered back up the luggage we'd put through on the belt, the little guy and I headed over to the separate security area. One of the things they always do is take a wand that has what looks like a wad of cotton on the end of it, run it over the wheelchair and Connor's g-tube apparatus, and drop the cotton with the residue sample into a machine. Normally then we're sent on our way. Well, this time they swiped it over the outside of Connor's pump, dropped it in the slot, and all the bells and whistles went off while the machine's screen turned red and blinked EXPLOSIVE RESIDUE in half-inch high letters.

This is always what you want to see at an airport.

So the supervisor was called, and Connor was disconnected from the pump, and a man wearing gloves very gently picked up Connor's g-tube pump and very gingerly bore it off, presumably for more thorough testing, while I got to answer questions about where I'd gotten the g-tube pump and if I'd been away from it at any time and where was I going and what did I intend to do there? My only guess as to why his g-tube pump tested positive (as I'm relatively sure that Connor has not been mucking around with explosives) is that Jer has recently received ten footlockers from Afghanistan, all covered in a liberal coating of the fine-grained desert sand that they refer to as "moon dust" over there and which undoubtedly contains traces of explosives and God knows what else. At any rate they finally decided that Connor and I were not very likely terrorists and the g-tube pump was returned to us in time for us to catch our plane.

So the plane ride was uneventful once we got off the ground. This took a while because the plane apparently over the weight limit. As the airport thought my solution of shuffling all the really obese people on the plane around so the weight was more evenly distributed to be rather politically incorrect, they had to rearrange the luggage instead. Once the problem was solved and we were up in the air, Connor caught a little nap and was overall a totally adorable well-behaved little angel. Possibly he was making up for the whole playing with explosives thing. Anyway, we touched down, my father met us at the airport, we dropped my mother-in-law off at her house and arrived home, where we spent a pleasant half an hour catching up and watching the tail end of the hockey game when Connor decided to have a massive allergic reaction to something.

He started off coughing a little and rubbing one eye, and fifteen minutes later both eyes were totally swollen shut, the rest of his face was red and swelling, and his nose was stuffing up. Mom ran across the street to my cousins' house and borrowed some Benadryl, and we gave him a big dose. So now he looks much, much better, is asleep in a crib in the bedroom, and we are totally stumped. I'll check again when I give him his next dose of Benadryl, but as of right now he doesn't appear to have any red spots or hives-- nothing resembling any of the earlier issues he's had.

So for now we'll be hovering over him with the Benadryl while we try to figure out what the heck is going on. Was it their cat? We have two at home he doesn't seem to react to, and he hasn't had this reaction at the homes of our friends who have cats. Was it the lavender bouquets? We have those at home too and he didn't touch them today. Now here's a thought-- maybe he's allergic to explosive residue! Um, okay, maybe not.

Unfortunately if he continues to have this sort of thing happen we may have to find a hotel room, which is sad as we'd like to stay with family but better than Connor randomly blowing up like a marshmallow in the microwave.

Just glad he's okay now.

~Jess