Rabid An(imal)sel

 It's been 10 days since Ansel's tonsillectomy and little dude is not doing well.  

I should say, not doing well at night.  He wakes up every two hours just screaming like a banshee.  I don't mean to sound like I'm making fun.  It's just factual.  He wakes up every two hours all night long and is just out of his mind.  

He is clearly in a lot of pain (at night. Totally seemingly fine during the day.)  And there's nothing more we want to do than to fix that.  But he has also gotten it into his head that taking Tylenol or ibuprofen is worse than death.  Or at least worse than his throat/jaw pain.  Or at least he hasn't been able to recognize that the medicine is actually helping him instead of being an elaborate way we torture him.  

So he screams when he wakes up.  He screams when we come into his room to try and help.  He screams when we pick him up.  He screams when we don't pick him up.  He screams if I offer to squeeze the little medicine syringe.  He screams when we ask him if he wants to do it instead.  He screams if we offer him ice water with a green (his favorite color) bendy straw instead. He screams if I look at the "wrong wall."

The only time he stops screaming is if we give him the medicine syringe (after he screams "I'LL ONLY TAKE IT IF YOU GO AWAY!") and leave the room.  And we fall for this every. single. time.  Why?  Because it's 1:30am on a Tuesday morning and we've been up at 9:30pm, 10:45 pm, and 12:00 am so far.  And we sit outside of his room and wait.  And slowly the screams stop.  And then we get hopeful.  And go into the room...only to find he's fast asleep with the full medicine syringe still in his fist.  

So far tonight this has happened three times.  In a row.  I keep letting it happen because I don't know how I could pin his arms down, steady his head, and get the medicine in his mouth + actually swallowing it while he's screaming at the top of his tiny lungs.  (And it's Paul's turn to get to sleep tonight - bunkered downstairs, insulated from banshee noise.)

Finally, during this last 'bout, at a complete loss, I finally grabbed the syringe and shot 1 ml (out of the 7.5 he needs) directly into the back of his screaming mouth.  Just to try and break him out of this screaming loop or something!  Anything!  In the darkness I couldn't tell if anything actually went down his throat, but at least he realized I meant business. 

It took five more minutes of sneak-squirting mini shock medicine bullets into his screaming mouth and having him react with surprise/betrayal/horror each time until I think, I hope, some actually made it into his stomach and I'd "finished" the dose.  You'd have thought he'd realize what was coming each time, but no it was the same level of "you traitor, you're trying to kill me" from him every time.  But after I was done, he immediately collapsed back onto his pillow, suddenly and shockingly in silence, and fell asleep in a literal second.  

I do NOT know how to break him of this screaming in the night reaction to pain.  I'm SURE it's actually making things worse for him.  I only want him to finally get some sleep and get some painkiller.  The last five nights have honestly been so much of The Worst.  Mostly for him!  At least I get to sleep in the bunker basement bed every other night.

I'll close this out with a portrait of daytime Ansel to try and balance things.  He calls floss, "sloth".   "Mommy, can I have some sloth?"  "I need to sloth my teeth."  We will never correct him.  Sort of like how he still talks about "salami (tsunami) waves."

From 2am, I'm closing this out by hoping my sneak medicine attack means we both get to sleep a little more than two hours now.