The story I am about to tell you is real. It is something that could only happen organically. I don't think a writer's room could come up with this particular series of bad events even if they were working with the great Lemony Snicket himself. Let us begin.
Beau and I have been planning a trip to Texas for the Fourth of July for about a year. We have an annual Fourth party in Texas with family, friends, and fireworks. It's important to us - it's been our constant in seeing our important people for many years. This year was especially exciting as it was RB's first time attending. Because our trip has been a sure thing (my phone accidentally typed "shit thing" and in a bit you will see how spot on that is), we've planned a few different events to happen while we're in town. We planned to see Beau's extended family in Lake Jackson, Texas, my extended family in Oklahoma, my grandmother in Arkansas, and we had a "Sip'n'See", which is a his and hers baby shower, plus the aforementioned party. This was no light agenda.
Now, the timing has been interesting because Beau and I just bought a house in Lake Jackson, Texas. We closed on the house in on July 3rd and are looking to move in by mid-August. We seriously considered cancelling this trip because of the timing. We debated for days on it. At the end of our debate, Beau actually said "it's not like we'll regret going on it, so let's go." How ironic. We decided that this trip we would tow Beau's Corvette so that it would already be in Texas when we move and he wouldn't have to worry about driving it cross country while we're dealing with everything else.
We left our home in Apopka, Florida on a Thursday night, two weeks before the Fourth party. Our plan was to be in Lake Jackson for our first shindig by Saturday morning. We planned to drive through the night while RB slept, and then we'd stop in the morning. I'd hang out with him while Beau rested and we'd rinse and repeat. This was a solid plan. We got the car packed, got the Corvette on the trailer, did bath time with RB and put him in his car seat, and we off we went. Things were going great. Honestly, the first few hours were fucking peachy keen. It really felt like we were doing the damn thing! RB watched the world pass us by through the car window and eventually dozed off. Hap did the same. Beau and I listened to music and chatted.
Then the games began. When I say games, I'm not referring to something jovial like Clue or Catchphrase - this leans more toward the gladiator games genre.
We were about two hours into our trip when we heard the alarm for the first time - it was an alarm on our car alerting us to the fact that we suddenly had no oil pressure. You may be like me and know very little about cars, but know this: oil is important to those machines. The car firmly informed us we needed turn the engine off immediately or else our carriage would turn into a pumpkin (aka our engine would cease to fucking exist). We were conveniently (*sarcasm*) on a two lane highway with non-existent shoulders, and exits every few (five) miles, so there was no real safe place to pull over. We literally had to pull over, so we did, and Beau assessed the situation. The car had oil (good sign!) and we knew either way we'd need to move the car, so we got back on the road and nursed it a few more miles. We noticed that the oil pressure was back, and Beau being the car guy he is had a theory that are oil pressure sensor was going bad. He had checked the dipstick and he knew that there was oil in the car, so that seemed like the most likely culprit. The oil pressure held so we drove on. We eventually made it to Tallahassee where the alarm went off again (super cool) and we decided to pull over for the night. When we got up in the morning, Beau found a shop in Tallahassee and got the oil pressure sensor replaced. He really took this all in stride. To him, car issues are no big deal. They are problems to be fixed. What a wild concept to someone like me who panics when things don't go to plan! (Yeah, I am fun at parties.) Somehow, we were back on the road the next evening.
From what I can remember from that night, because of all trip has been a blur, everything went fairly smoothly. We drove through to Biloxi, I think. The fact that I'm not remembering that night well must mean it wasn't a shit show.
Things really started to go sideways in Louisiana. We were driving through and we pulled over to a gas station. Beau had packed a AC converter so that I could plug in the bottle warmer we have and warm RB's bottles on the road. We're at a gas station, and I plug in the converter, and then I plug in the bottle warmer, and then I apparently fried the fuses in the car for every single cigarette lighter that existed. We were now without a way to charge our phones, and we were using our phones on a cross-country drive so that was a super awesome great time. This also meant the bottle warmer had no way to work so it was pretty fantastic all around. RB had his first ever cold bottle - I mean, I've previously offered him cold bottles, and he's kindly told me to fuck off, so the fact that this was how it had to be gave me a little bit of heartburn. He scares me sometimes, if I'm being totally honest. I know he's a baby and I'm supposed to be the adult in control, but if you have ever been a parent, you know there are moments in which that concept is total bullshit. Luckily, RB cooperated and sucked down the bottle. Once that was done, we decided we needed to eat something. The closest thing to us was a McDonald's but McDonald's typically makes Beau and I very sick.
We debated and decided instead we would just run across the street to this little local restaurant and grab two po boys. Beau had shrimp and I had catfish, and afterward we got back on the road. If I recall correctly, this is when RB started crying in the backseat unconsolably. For two full hours. I gave him a bottle and he didn't calm down. I sang to him and he didn't calm down. I patted his belly, I rubbed his head, I played peekaboo, I offered to pay him, I let him have my sunglasses and throw those around, and I think at one point I offered him my soul if he would just get his shit together. I really can't remember much about this because at the time it seemed like the worst thing, but now after everything we've been through it seems like such a little thing. I'm pretty sure it was at this point in the journey that this happened though, because it was after some of the bad stuff but before the really shitty stuff. Anyway, that two hours was a really rough two hours. He was absolutely losing his mind and honestly so were we. We were trying to be very cool and calm him down but a screaming baby driving down the road in a state far away from your home and far away from your destination, it's just not an easy environment in which to calm anyone down. Eventually he did calm down (emphasis on eventually).
Now we were in Louisiana and emotionally raw from our trip so far and from RB crying. We pull over at a gas station, and Beau gets out to go inside, and he immediately turns around and comes back to the driver's seat. He then tells me that his Corvette that we've been towing is covered in oil. It was not covered in oil when we left Florida but it is indeed covered in oil now. We pretty quickly deduce we have a gigantic oil leak in the Tahoe that we are driving and it is spewing oil all over the Corvette. We look under the car, which is off at this moment, and we don't see any major oil leaks. Common sense tells us there has to be one. Beau turns the car back on and we look under the car, and there it is - the car is gushing oil like it's an artery that's been cut. I mean it is fucking gushing oil. Like I don't think there was any oil left in that car. It was wild. Immediately we assume that it probably has something to do with the original issue that we had already fixed back in Florida, but now we are in Louisiana and we cannot take the car back to that shop. In short, we are fucked.
We have to find a hotel within a maximum of two miles of us because the car could not make it much farther than that or else we would blow the engine. We found the Cobblestone Hotel in Vinton, Louisiana, and we limped the Tahoe over there. I immediately got a room because we needed to get Hap and RB out of the heat and we couldn't leave the Tahoe running. We got the boys into the hotel room and I was inside with them keeping them cool, calm, and collected, while Beau was outside dealing with the Tahoe which I'm sure he was considering pushing off a ledge at that point. We were legitimately stranded. We were trying to figure out if we were going to have to get a rental car, except the closest rental car to where we were was 13 miles in either direction. We were trying to figure out where we were going to tow this car. How we were going to tow this car. How much it was going to cost us to tow this car. If there was a shop that could look at it in the time frame that we had, which was pretty much right fucking now. How we were going to make it to where we were trying to get to, if our car was broken down in Louisiana and we were not trying to be in Louisiana. I mean this was like a pretty bad fucking deal.
I remembered that Beau's childhood best friend, Chris and his wife Brittany, lived in, I thought, Beaumont (they actually live in Orange, TX). Now, I know nothing about geography or really where I am in the world or how close things are together, but I for some reason was like "Hey, I think that they live near where we are maybe they could give us a place to stay? Or I don't know. Let's just see what happens if we call them." Beau was like "I don't really know what that could do for us in the situation but okay, I'll call them. Maybe they will know a place we can take the car and get it looked at or something of that nature." So Beau gave Chris Blakesly, our friend and first savior of this trip, a call. Wildly enough, Chris and his wife, Brittany, lived about 15 minutes from where we had broken down. Talk about a small fucking world. I still can't get over that. Now, Chris is a captain on a tugboat and he was out on that tugboat at the time. Chris and Brittany, out of the actual, literal, and overwhelming kindness of their hearts, offered to let us borrow Chris's truck while he is out on the tugboat so we could continue towing the Corvette and not be stuck where we were. Who does something like that? I wish there was a better word to describe this than nice. It was much more than nice of them. It was honestly fucking saintly. Brittany actually drove Chris's truck out to where we were, helped us pack up all of our things into the truck (including our baby and our dog!) helped us get the Corvette trailer hooked up to the truck (that's right - they even let us tow our trailer!) and then politely asked us to drop her off at their house on our way through. I just don't think there's a way to convey how impactful their kindness was accurately in this moment. We were, for lack of a better way to put it, shit out of luck were it not for the Blakesly's intervention in this moment.
At this point in the story, we are back on the road, and we are approximately 3 hours away from our first official destination, Lake Jackson, Texas. We hit the road at 10:30 p.m. and about midnight, an hour and a half away from our destination, Beau and I are both suddenly hit with an overwhelming exhaustion and we decide it would be safer for us to pull over and stay at a hotel for the night rather than continue on. Prior to us having RB, we probably would have seen it through and just full-blown sent it, but there's this sense of responsibility when your offspring is in the backseat sleeping and trusting you to get them there safely that maybe it's worth pulling over and just taking an extra night to get where you're going. Plus, we were in a borrowed truck, and we're full blown adults now so we do our best to be responsible where we can. We see a Super 8 Motel and we pull over and get a room.
This is where things got pretty dark for us. We get all of our essentials out of the truck, got in the room, we lock the truck up, and everybody to bed. It's probably about 12:30 at the point that everybody's asleep, including RB whom I did accidentally wake up when transferring him into his pack and play. That is a skill I have not perfected, but god willing I will one day.
Then came staph food poisoning!
I was the first to wake up at 3:00 a.m. and I was violently ill. I mean violently - Texas Chainsaw violent. I proceed to puke my guts out and then wander back to bed. 3:30 rolls around and Beau goes through the same experience. We go on to both experience the same thing over and over for the next 7 hours, both of us just rotating out of the single bathroom in our shitty Motel 8 room.
RB normally wakes up at about 7:15 or 7: 30 every morning. When we're in Florida, we're on Eastern Time, but when we're in Texas, we are on Central time. That means that our normal wake-up time is actually an hour earlier. That's a little hellish, if I'm being honest. I can't remember exactly what time RB woke up on this day because I was barely clinging to life as it was, but obviously he was in the hotel room with us. He woke up, and was pretty jarred by what was going on, but, hell, who wasn't? I was holding him on the bed at one point, and Beau was doing his thing in the bathroom (and by doing his thing I mean being assaulted by his own body), and I could feel myself getting nauseous. I've already mentioned there was only one bathroom in this hotel room. Normally that's not a problem, but on this particular day, it was unfortunate obstacle. So, I'm feeling nauseous, I'm holding the baby, and I try to be super mom (what the fuck was I thinking). This next part is gross, so go ahead and feel free to skip if you are easily grossed out. I can feel my body getting ready to throw up and I decided I was going to take control, which is laughable considering the state I was in. My body throws up, I say no, and I try to swallow it, which then makes me spew everywhere, while I am holding my child. If you haven't already done the math, yes, I did throw up on my baby. It wasn't a direct hit, it was more arterial spray, but just as scarring nonetheless. He handled it very, very well - like as well as anyone can handle that situation, that's how he handled it. He was more surprised than he was upset. God bless him. I also threw up all over the bed I was on. Good news is, there were two beds in the room, so Beau still had somewhere to lay that was not soiled by my disgustingness. I started laughing hysterically when this happened.
It's probably important for you to know that I am a nervous laugher and I laugh in all inappropriate settings. If I even get a whiff of being uncomfortable, I am giggling uncontrollably. Beau broke his toe when I was pregnant and I laughed uncontrollably while he writhed around on the floor in pain. I am a monster.
Back to the story - at this point I am laughing hysterically, looking up at the ceiling, and wondering why the universe has decided to comically and cosmically fuck with us to the point of this. I am questioning all of my life decisions and wondering how it got me to where I am, sitting on a bed in a Motel 8 with my baby on whom I've just vomited. I did clean him off as best I could in my state. I didn't leave him in what had happened. Just felt the need to clarify that.
It was at this point we knew we needed help. We'd sensed we needed help before, but now there was no denying it. I had been texting with my mother-in-law and my parents. This particular day was the day we were supposed to go have a family reunion with Beau's extended family in Lake Jackson, so I had been in communication with my mother-in-law regarding this, and also my soul trying to leave my body via this food poisoning. She was already going to be driving down to Lake Jackson for the get together so she was already getting up to get on the road and head that way. Please remember that we were an hour and a half from Lake Jackson at this point. I texted her, I actually can't really remember what I said, because we were talking on Snapchat so I can't even look back at it. But basically I said "hey, we are in shambles. We need an adult." Beau is also talking to her, so maybe he said this, I'm not really sure, all of these moments blur together.
She is about to get on the road to head our way but she's still in Georgetown where she lives, which is approximately four and a half hours from where we are. She calls her sister, Karen, and asks if she can come to the hotel where we are to hold RB and take care of him while we are slowly wasting away (she probably didn't phrase it that way), while her and Wayne, her partner, would drive out there in the meantime. Now, we needed her and Wayne to drive out there, because we needed Wayne to drive the truck that we had driven to the hotel because it had a loaded trailer on it. We couldn't exactly leave it where it was because it wasn't a great area. We hadn't planned to be there for longer than 8 hours.
After we asked to be saved but before anyone got to us, Beau went to a gas station and got us Gatorades. Now, I don't really remember this happening, because again, it's like my memory was erased. I do remember him walking out of the room and coming back with Gatorades but I don't really know how much time passed. Apparently, he walked in without shoes or a shirt on, and I wish that I had the opportunity to talk to the gas station attendant now, because I'd love to hear his take on it. No doubt Beau was in rough shape. I'm convinced that Gatorade was vital and a direct contributor to our survival of this attack on our bodies.
Karen, God bless her, gets on the road and heads our way. She is at our location within 2 hours of getting the phone call. She comes in and I immediately hand her RB, she gives him a bottle, and then I disappeared into the shower. I proceeded to lay on the floor with the hottest of hot water pouring over me and just wish for sweet release. It was so hot it gave me a rash. I literally laid in that shower for somewhere around 2 hours.
Beau and I both were so fucking sick. Poor Karen heard and saw so many things that she could have definitely lived her entire life without seeing or hearing. I do not know what we would have done without her. Let me repeat that: I genuinely do not know what the actual fuck we would have done had Karen not shown up and taken care of RB. I have thanked her probably a couple of dozen times so far, and the last time I saw her, I told her that I was literally going to thank her every single time I see her for the rest of our lives for saving us.
At this particular point in the story, I am lying on the ground in the hottest shower I've ever taken of my life praying that the Earth would open up and swallow me whole, and Beau is still violently ill. I was also still pretty sick but I had given up on trying to drink water or anything so I didn't really have anything to get out and at this point my body was more just going through the motions than actually doing anything.
Here's an interesting little tidbit: we think maybe the water at the hotel was a contributing factor. Beau was drinking water out of the tap, and so was I, but I stopped drinking that water about an hour and a half before he stopped drinking that water. I also got better about an hour and a half before he got better. When I say better I'm more mean that the violence ceased, but we were in no way healed. That took days. It actually feels like at this point in our journey we had gotten dysentery on the Oregon Trail. I honestly felt like we were in 1883.
Wayne and Cindy, my mother-in-law, show up and help us get our shit together as much as possible in this moment. Cindy collected all of our shit from the hotel room, because when you travel with a baby, you have an insane amount of belongings that you have to take to and fro when you go in and out of a hotel. It is exhausting. Cindy got all of our things back in the truck. She took one look at Beau and was like "you should go to the hospital." I was, I think, at this point laying on the corner of the bed in the dark, mostly just body, no soul or personality existing within me. She spotted me after she spotted Beau because I was so incognito. Eventually we got Beau in the truck with Wayne, I was in Cindy's car with RB and Cindy, and Karen was in her car. We all left to drive back to Lake Jackson and we had agreed that Beau was probably going to go to the hospital, because food poisoning really affects him. He's had a handful of times in his life and it has absolutely wrecked him every time, so when he gets that dehydrated, we typically try to get him to an urgent care or an ER for his safety. He had only stopped throwing up about 10 minutes before they got to the hotel whereas I had stopped throwing up about 90 minutes before they got to the hotel, so I was pretty good to go by the time we got in the car, but he was still pretty sick.
We pull out of the hotel parking lot and RB immediately starts throwing a shit fit. I'm laying in the backseat of Cindy's car, still wondering why I've been spared and left on this Earth, because I'm so fucking sick I can't imagine a future in which I don't feel like absolute shit. RB is very upset, don't blame him for that, but I am a shell of my former self and I barely have it in me to calm him. After 15 minutes of full blown freaking out and me in his face trying to soothe him while also smelling like a sick and/or dead person, he eventually falls asleep. I did as well.
Next thing I know, I come to in the parking lot of a Buc-ee's. I am full blown sweating, but it is not from the flop sweats I was having earlier. No, no, no - it's actually because I managed to turn on the fucking seat warmer so I am laying on a seat warmer in June in Texas where does 102° outside. I'm desperate for water. It's all I can think about. Water has consumed my thoughts. Cindy goes into buc-ee's and gets me a water. It is the greatest thing that I've ever had. That was the single most relieving moment of my life, when I had that first sip of water. I could see hope at the end of this long and dark tunnel. Things were long up, because Beau too had recovered enough during the drive to not need to go to the hospital.
Eventually we made it to Beau's Aunt and Uncle's house, Sherri and John. After that, it's mostly fade to black for me. I know that Wayne and Cindy hung out for the day and help to take care of RB along with Sherri and John. I slept, I think Beau slept too, or at least I can only assume, because again, I was barely present in my own body.
We did have to cancel the family get together that day. I feel really bad about that. I've already vowed to myself that we will have a housewarming party with all of the family once we get moved in down there. It took Beau and I days to recover, and I actually ended up in the Urgent Care two days later because I was still having a hard time recovering.
My body is still pretty pissed about it. My appetite is kind of coming back. A very disappointing and long-lasting development from this is my breast milk supply is just about gone. I was producing upwards of 36 to 40 oz a day. Here I am 10 days later after my poisoning, and I'm lucky to be producing 12 oz a day. So, RB has had formula, though I was really hoping to do exclusively breastfeeding up until he was here old, but obviously my body had other plans. Right now, he is having the formula and supplemental breast milk. I'm trying not to be too hard on myself about it but I'm really not doing great at that. I'm disappointed that my body isn't able to do what I expected to do. That's a new feeling for me.
I've already called my dad at least three times and cried about it. He keeps telling me it is what it is and it's okay, my baby is thriving, and he's healthy, and that's all that really matters. And he's not wrong. I hear his logic in my brain, but my heart has a hard time accepting it. Maybe my breast milk supply will come back. Beau seems pretty hopeful that it will. But the more days that get between me and The Incident, as we are calling it, the less hopeful I feel. Eventually my body was going to wean anyway, and this happened at a weird time, because he was 7 months old, and breast milk supply typically dips for many women at that point in time because more solids are being introduced in the baby's diet. Maybe it has something to do with that too. Who fucking knows.
Lots of other stuff happened during our trip after this, but for the most part the negativity ended here. We did eventually have the Tahoe towed to a shop and we learned that the rear main seal had blown (that is a catastrophic failure, for those of you interested). We had it fixed and Beau did have to road trip out to go get it and to return the Blakesly's truck. We've driven the Tahoe around for at least week now, from Lake Jackson to Georgetown to Oklahoma to Georgetown again, and it's solid again.
The greatest part of the story are our friends and family. They really came through for us. I think there's two ways to look at what the universe is placed on our path here: 1) you could look at it like the universe is placing obstacles in our path and trying to tell us we should not move to Texas, or 2) you could look at it like the universe has placed these obstacles in our path and we were only able to get through them because of the incredible people that love and support us that were readily available and able to get to us. Had all of this happened in Florida, we would have been up shit creek without a paddle.
I personally look at it through the lens of option two. I just think about what our experience would have been had all this happened and we had not been where we were when it happened. For me, that's not coincidental, that is a universal reiteration that we are making the right choice by moving our family closer to the people that love us and support us.
If you are one of those people that has loved and supported us recently through your gracious acts of kindness, I hope you know how much we appreciate you. I think I've told all of you individually that you've changed my life, and I'm not being dramatic when I say that. You have literally impacted me in such a way that will probably ripple throughout the rest of my life. The next time I know someone that's in need, I will think about what you did for me. I will try to be there for others as you were there for me, and you were there for me for no other reason than to just be there for me. None of you benefited from what you experienced. That is such an incredible gift. Thank you.
If you have read this entire blog, holy shit - you are a champion. I did all of this through voice to text, so this is actually how I talk, and I'm pretty sure this is like a 20 minute blog. I needed to get all of this out of my head and onto paper. I can't have a dwelling in there any longer. Thanks for reading. It's hard to make it funny, but I mean it was really dark. Hopefully you laughed a little bit, and hopefully you cried a hell of a lot less than I did.
This is me, in urgent care. I literally took this so I could post it on this blog. The whole thing was fucking laughable. Laughable because who the fuck does all this happen to?
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