Achtung! It's soap box day.

We're out of the woods, but Soren had a creepy vaccine reaction the other day and it's making me feel a little angry. For those of you with children, maybe you can relate. The minute your baby is born, someone is poking them with a needle for one sort of injection or another. This needle poking doesn't slow down until they are 2-years old. It rears its ugly needle point again when they're 5. Plus, if you even have any questions about the efficacy or value (just polite questions mind you) your pediatrician gets really defensive and spouts some quackery about vaccines and their paramount importance. So, out of guilty feelings for possibly offending a pediatrician that you love, you go ahead and agree to turning your little Muffin into a pin-cushion. You have no sound evidence as to why you're agreeing to this procedure, but you do it because you don't want Dr Nice/Home Boy to look at you like that again. Never mind that there is presently an outbreak of chicken pox out here among children with documented vaccinations (all the boys are now at risk of future sterility). Never mind that as a child my parents dutifully had me vaccinated for childhood diseases and I STILL got the mumps (VERY painful, I remember).

I continue to vaccinate my children, largely because I want to be polite but also because my husband loves inactivated viruses and the fact that my health care dollars go into pockets of scientific researchers like him so that they in turn can feed their babies and vaccinate their children with the same methodical quackery that the rest of us rely on for rationale.

Now to the story. Soren went to the pediatrician last week. He got poked 5 rotten times, cried like a baby pterodactyl undergoing eyeball extraction unanesthetized and was very traumatized (he did that I'm-in-shock-breathing for about 2-hours). Then for the next day and a half he became febrile, lethargic, extremely irritable and arthralgic. Then his skinny little arm blew up to the size of my calf, became red, hot, and very tender to touch. The whole thing was scary, and to think I consented to this procedure, on behalf of my non-consenting son, just because I so dearly loved our pediatrician BACK IN MICHIGAN!!!! What the heck is wrong with me? Why didn't I stick up for my baby Drama Prince? It was scary and angryfying. I don't even care so very much for the pediatrician here, not nearly as good as Dr Home Boy (who was kind of cute in his bald sort-of-way). Dr Pale Skinny Californian isn't bad, she just isn't interesting. Her response? "Well, he's definitely had an allergic reaction." Ya! Sure! Ya betcha! She also confirmed what I already knew, again, that he's now done with his vaccination series so no worries about future exposures. The vaccination probably responsible was MMR, which is more often guilty of allergifying children than most other vaccines.

Can't be sure.

Thanks Dr Pale, I'm glad science is working for us all. I feel like Dr Home Boy would have humored me a bit better.

Well, anyhow, whether we like it or not Soren is now 'done' with his childhood vaccinations. The fact that he was this close to anaphylactic shock (by my own very esteemed clinical opinion) is a risk I'm just going to have to take, you know, for herd immunity's sake (my son the cow). I'm feeling very cynical and I'm feeling like I should probably just go ahead and blame this on George Bush, my #1 most favorite scape goat. He he he.

My little man is well now, totally alert and oriented. It was a near miss, I tell ya. The picture above depicts him post-reaction. You can see that his right arm is still a wee-bit bigger than the left, but at least it has returned to white boy flesh coloured (spelled the British way because I'm mad at George Bush). I'm thinking the AAP (American Academy of Pediatrics) and the CDC&Prevention should just give me their lawyers' phone numbers now cuz if this little man gets anything less than an A+ on future report cards we'll all KNOW why.

In other news, stuff is sublime with Ultimette -- a name change I know, but Grandma Debbie renamed her from Ultima (in honor of my, er, Mexican heritage), I suppose in homage to my Frenchiness and I like it better . . . durn it.

Apparently there is some drama with the house we're are purchasing for $7986645312 billion dollars. Our realtor found out that another "party" is staking claim to the title . . . whatever that means. I don't see how this is my problem, this would be our good friend Countrywide's problema (soon to be BofA). And if those donkey-wipes don't get it revolved STAT, yo, then someone is going to pay because a cute little family with 3-gorgeous children, a hound dog cum sea lion, pregnant human cum hieffer and gorgeous man-daddy will be homeless. Now that is travesty, or is it tragedy (one is for after you're dead and one is to represent your limitless suffering . . . no?).

Ay caramba.