PhilosYphia

It has always seemed that gardeners around me had a timing for getting going in the spring that rivaled even the reliability of the flittering redbreast himself, timing their plantings and tillings to acutely match the torrid thrashings of the new warmth and dashing rains. I always marveled how they could slip things in between drenchings with apparent ease and therefore would have crops weeks ahead of mine, simply because by the time I got my garden planted, it was the end of May and summer was in full swing.

Until now, that is. Maybe the perils of age come with a few pearls of glory.

My father came over with his overpowered tiller on Sunday afternoon and proceeded to beat the tar out of the soil that had lain dormant over the long winter, cussing slightly because I had thought it best to drown it in a few inches of compost, leaves, and grass clippings for good measure. But the old bear of a tiller was the victor in the long run, slapping it into submission, and by evening I had a good plot going.

Normally I would let it sit there for a few days, but I thought I should get a jump on it and tossed handfuls of seeds into hoed trenches, all the while attempting to space them correctly but not so accurately that I would be chagrined for being a pompous anal git.

In this pursuit I discovered a wonderful invention — seed tape. For the uninitiated (as I was, prior to this season), seed tape is where they take something very similar to toilet paper and lay the small seeds of some unfortunate plant (a lettuce mix in this case) between the layers, pre-spaced and pre-mixed for your pleasure. And pleasure I did as it took a ton of frustration out of the process and instead replaced it with maniacal glee at the prospect of planting an entire row of lettuce in 30 seconds or less.

In total, I laid down 4 rows of peas, 3 of yellow onions, 2 of lettuce salad mix, 2 of parsnip, 1 of peanuts, and 3 of green beans. For markers I tried something new, hacking foot-and-a-half lengths of 1/2″ PVC pipe with a saw and hammering them into the ground at the head of each row. That took up about half of the length of the garden.

For the rest, I was planning on planting our usual OMG array of tomato plants. We found out the first year that the red fruit grows extremely well in our soil and, since we love doing things with them, they are our typical “bumper crop” item. However, we buy plants, not seeds, and I had yet to obtain them.

Tuesday evening after work, I decided to find a greenhouse I had seen advertised in Charles City where I work. Since the alternative was either Wal*Mart or a local greenhouse about 15 minutes from home, I thought it couldn’t hurt to check it out.

I tell ya, I’ve found my new favorite greenhouse.

The place is immaculate with this huge array of absolutely gorgeous flowers that makes me want to terraform my entire backyard and house into perpetual flowerbeds. I wandered up and down the aisle just taking in the flood of colors and scents, pure candy to the eyes.

The vegetable section was small, but the quality was not diminished and I was able to pick up 32 tomato plants of 3 different varieties, pay my $17.50 for them, and head on home. Upon arriving home, I checked the darkening sky and radar and decided that I could make a run for it. Over the next half hour I ran, sweated, dug, shoved, planted, and covered all of the plants and still had 5 minutes to stand and watch the sky before the floodgates opened and dumped one of the most gorgeous rains ontop of us.

I love rains like those…start in the evening, done by morning, and a steady yet full downpour that really soaks and settles the ground, cleans the air, and generally makes everything go from simply greenish to GREEN.

And, for the first time, my garden was completely in the ground, leaves and dreams turned towards the skies, taking in that first deep soaking. I smiled to myself as I exited the house this morning, glancing towards my well-saturated garden, and internally patted myself on the back for figuring out the game like the gardeners that I admired. I might not have it all figured out, and the weeds are just as likely to grow this year as any, but I’ve won the first round. Bring on the summer!

Since shortly after birth, our son Keston has had a recurring skin issue. They are patches of rashes that appear on his skin, sometimes slowly and sometimes very quickly, but equally itchy. They are bad enough at times that all he can do while awake is to itch (which tears up his skin due to his razor-sharp fingernails). It also wakes him up several times a night because he’s uncomfortable and he thrashes around and itches for awhile before going back to sleep, usually with the aid of a bottle from us. This means that we’re still, at 5.5 months, getting up every hour or two to handle him.

It was originally diagnosed as eczema, but was elevated to an, “I don’t know,” status by the head dermatologist at the Forest Park Clinic in Mason City and we were referred up to pediatric dermatologist Dr. Jennifer Hand at the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, to find out exactly what it was, perhaps why it occurred, and what to do about it. So yesterday I took a day off work and we made the 2 hour drive (and tank of $3.60/gallon gas) up to submit Keston to some poking and prodding and hopefully find some answers to his issues.

The trip was essentially worthless and utterly frustrating. The head dermatologist in Mason is convinced it is *not* eczema, yet once we got up there, the Dr. Hand gave him a brief glance and was like, “It’s just eczema. He looks great. What’s the problem?” Which is nice — he was having one of his good days, rare though they be — but it doesn’t give us many solutions for the nighttime itching and his outburst of rashes from seemingly nothing. Also, wouldn’t you do more if the head of the dermatology clinic in Mason doesn’t even know what the hell it is???

Sigh.

Of course, it started off badly — we were about 5 minutes late so we were rushing, driving through Rochester in the pissing rain, trying to find the parking garage, but that was no problem — we got there and checked in fine. However, when I checked in, the receptionist said, “Oh, is that paperwork for the doctor?” indicating the referral letter and the sheet of all Keston’s prescriptions and diet. I confirmed that it was, and she said, “Oh, ok, I’ll take that and make sure she gets it.” I thought that was nice, so we settled down into the very pretty and subtlety-lit waiting room.

But when it came time to see the doctor, we asked if she had seen the paperwork and she’s like, “No, what paperwork?” She sent the nurse after it, but the receptionist had run off to lunch and the nurse just came back and shrugged her shoulders. The doctor seemed unfazed by this and although we said we could wait for them to find the papers, she just said to continue on, she knew what it was and didn’t need to see the referral (which, in that letter, the doctor in Mason explains why he thought it *wasn’t* eczema). So we had to explain what was going on from memory, his entire history and meds/foods/etc. even though we had written it all down already (my wife has been extremely organized with it all, bless her).

So she weighed him (22lbs now, good thing we got the new car seat today) and briefly examined him and then she pulled out a sheet of suggestions for handling eczema and listed everything off, but we’re already doing everything on the sheet so she was like, “Oh, well, you’re doing good then. Carry on.” We did get another different antihistamine to try at night and yet another OTC skin cream but that’s about it. She said that Keston is nothing compared to some of the kids she sees whose eczema is so bad that they stop growing and get sepsis and staph infections. Which is nice enough to know that we’re not an extreme case, but we still feel like the poor sod shouldn’t have to wake up every hour or two at night itching and tearing up his skin.

So we left feeling very much like we had just completely wasted a tank of gas and an office copay. We went off and did some mild shopping and poking around Rochester, stopped to get supper at TGI Friday’s, decided we didn’t like the look and prices on the menu, and instead ended up at Famous Dave’s. As we did I kept getting madder and madder about the situation and now I’m really pissed about it. So I don’t know what to do at this point, but I think we got fucked and someone’s going to hear about it.

I mean…if we’re doing all we can for Keston and there’s nothing up with him but the eczema and so forth, fine. I can deal with that and we’ll keep on doing what we’re doing to control it. (She said most kids grow out of it by 1 years, but then they usually get asthma…joy.) But if it isn’t, I’m going to feel really bad that we were blown off and, at the time, I didn’t have the balls to tell the doctor she was being a daffy bitch (and or hunt down the stupid bint of a secretary and give her what-for for losing our goddamned paperwork).

Sometimes I envy Type A’s ability to speak up at the moment, whereas I always think about what I *should* have said at the time and then kick myself later. Hindsight…GAH!

For those of us around the Midwest, Mayo is touted as being one of the premier health care centres around, garnering the business of presidents and international dignitaries and handling thousands of cases a year. While I realize that my son’s skin problems are probably small potatoes in the the large scheme of things, don’t we deserve a fair whack at the resources as well, especially if we’ve been explicitly referred there?