Wait. What just happened?

 "I suspect your husband has Asperger's Syndrome" the pediatric neurologist tells me.

"Uh. Are you serious?" I stutter

"Well, it's not an official diagnosis but I am fairly certain"

"But...why?"

"You should read up about it. They often have long hair"

(So do all my exes)

"They also often have facial piercings or earrings "

(Oh shit)

"And they almost always go into engineering or software"

(Oh dear...I might be an Aspyophile. Is that a thing?)

"They don't make eye contact and tend to not speak but when they do they talk in a monotone voice"

I start to relax. The Dr doesn't know Tommie like I do. 

The fact that the consultation cost almost R3000 is enough to make anyone not want to speak to you, okay, guy.

Three hours earlier; break of dawn.

I stumble out of bed with a toddler in my arms to go fumble some coffee into a cup that I then struggle to drink on the patio as the sun rises and the baby cries because I dared do something I wanted to do for five minutes.

As I blearily look at my child in the early morning light, I go cold as I behold her left eye is swollen almost completely shut.

It's fine, I say to myself. 

Just an eye infection.

I will get some antibiotic eye ointment.

I hope the neurologist doesn't think she always looks like this...

Something very Quasimodo going on there...

Anyway, I start getting ready for the day and drop off the kids around 08:00 just to fetch Danté again at 09:00.

"Why don't we just keep her here until 09:00?" asks Tommie, Mr I-get-to-poop-alone.

"Because I would like to look nice for the pediatric neurologist. He might be tall."

This seems to satisfy Tommie and off we go.

Going to the Zuid Afrikaanse Hospital has its own kind of je ne sais qoui.

There are two street entrances, both narrow and sudden in their appearance. It's an exciting guessing game in figuring out which one to use, depending on the specialist you are visiting.

This experience becomes utterly exhilarating when combined with "helpful" snarks, coming from your spouse in the passenger seat and loud wailing coming from your toddler in the back seat.

You could further enhance the whole theme by having, say, hearing aids whipped at your head.

I manage to navigate the first entrance (wrong one btw) without flattening a lamp pole or pedestrian or feeding my husband a knuckle sandwich.

The guy at the ticket station (yes, a real, live person, sitting in a box, like at tollgates) doesn't look at me as I wave my hand at the button. 

It's just far enough for me to start worrying about being that person who has to open their car door to get to the damn ticket machine. 

Crick, whispers my neck. Something snaps gently in my armpit and finally the ticket appears with a soft whirr.

Okay. Step one complete. We are entering the premises.

Step two: find the right consulting room.

Check. (Only a few minutes of dazed wandering around the hospital, looking for clues.)

When we finally find ourselves in the waiting room there are thankfully no other patients waiting, which gives me the opportunity to breastfeed my little tick, narrowly watching the receptionist for judgement.

She doesn't seem to mind.

The Dr comes out of his office and looks uncomfortable.

I hastily pack away the boobs and shuffle inside.

It's not even that they are gorgeous and making people uncomfortable because of their amazingness. To be honest, the prostheses is still perky as hell but the natural breasts hang off them like boxers that just lost a fight and are clinging onto consciousness by a thread.

Just let us die, they seem to croak at me from inside my feeding bra (who echoes their sentiment).

The Dr asks many many, oh so many questions that I already answered on the very very, oh so very annoying form his receptionist had sent me the week before.

I don't mind the questions on forms but the templates drive me to distraction.

Ever heard of drop downs, apps and the 21st century, people?

Once I have to open something in DocHub, just fucking shoot me.

Finally he goes to check her scans in another room and just before exiting, he turns around and says jokingly:

"Your husband, by the way, is such a warm and communicative person...I will give you his diagnosis as well"

I had all but forgotten Tommie was even in the room. He was sitting in the corner chair with his head down, looking at his phone, grunting responses every 20 minutes or so.

Probably randomly.

I believe Tommie's unique brain has a knack for selective hearing.

Something like; "Blah blah blah blah blah droëwors (recognition and animation) blah blah (goes back to sleep).

Mentioning cryptocurrency, I find, is the most effective way of communicating with him.

I start all my WhatsApps with: "Important Crypto Question incoming" rapidly followed by the mundane: "Do you need something from Spar?" Before his lucid REM cycle kicks back into gear.

"Blah blah blather bloop" says the neurologist.

"Blubber blap R3000 can be paid at reception blurgle"

Tommie is not pleased and neither is Danté who is raving with boredom and indignation at having her a-hole unexpectedly checked by a neurologist. She, and us, were not prepared for a-hole examinations (this includes the consultation fee).

We were also not prepared for a twofer diagnoses.

Luckily Tommie was outside the office when the Dr dropped his bombshell on me.

He concludes the consultation saying

"This is my cellphone number, please WhatsApp me if you have any questions about Asperger's"

I gawk at him and turn to leave.

As an afterthought he mentions:

"Her eye is worrying me a little, I will give you a script for ointment but please just follow me quickly"

He pops next door into a pediatrician consulting room, storms passed the receptionist, barges into the Dr's office (where she is busy with a patient) and all but drags her by the ear into the hallway to "just have a quick look at this eye".

"I am going to admit you right away" she says. Apparently eye infection can easily slip into the brain and fuck up your kid, six-love.

The world ends a little bit for me. Tommie's face reflects my devastation. 

I don't know why, exactly. He's not the one getting incarcerated with a three-second-attention-span illiterate who frequently unleashes her pent-up fury onto your breasts, cell-mate . I think maybe he heard Blah blah blah, your work weekend away just evaporated into mist and was replaced with invaluable one-on-one time with your four year old daughter who seems to aspire to being The Bane of your Existence when she grows up.

On the way to the unavoidable Covid testing tent I desperately fight the urge to round on Tommie and hiss " Can you PLEASE act LESS fucking autistic in front of neurologists! Make eye contact, for fuck's sake, say something and FOR ALL THAT IS GOOD AND DEAR IN THE WORLD, FLUCTUATE YOUR TONE OF VOICE WHEN YOU DO!"

I narrowly escape this fraught situation by thankfully having a nasal swab jabbed deep into my brain.

I fill in some more forms with streaming eyes and a 9kg baby dangling like a cliff hanger from my poor, resigned breast.

When we finally get to emergency care to start the admition process, I bid Tommie a tearful goodbye (he looks suspiciously relieved) and stand in the hallway, listening to nurses poking my baby full of holes, trying to find a vein to put the drip (and big-time antibiotics) in.

Once they are done and I get to swoop in and rescue her, I warn them that their little pussy bandage is going to tear like tissue paper in the wake of my wrathful child but they titter nervously and leave.

Danté cries herself to sleep during which time we are wheeled to the x-ray department to have her abdominal organs and heart sonars done.

Mr two-for-one pediatric neurologist had told us it's to check for tuberosclerosis which he also forbade us, on the pain of death, to Google.

"You will have a heart attack if you do" he tantalizes us.

At x-rays they inform me that the guy who does the abdominal sonar is there but the heart sonar guy is not, so will I mind being wheeled back first thing tomorrow?

I want to sarcastically pull out my diary to check what I had planned for the next day.

Have a life. Be free. Frolick in the wilderness. Eat own food. But first cook own food when get hungry so can eat own food. But also before that go to grocery store to buy food ingredients with which to cook and then the eating. Also, have any money so can buy stuff to make other stuff to stuff into face. 

Suddenly hospital doesn't seem all that bad.

After being wheeled back to emergency, Danté wakes up and promptly rips out her drip in a fountain of blood.

Their little bandage had given way at the first sign of conflict. Pussy-ass little punk bandage.

The nurses seem surprised, even though I warned them repeatedly.

We get admitted into the children's ward and the pediatrician announces that Danté had probably had enough antibiotics in the hour the drip was still in and will only get hooked up again the next day. Seems weird to me that it was such a mad rush to get it inserted and us admitted and then suddenly just grow flacid and useless.

Like... can't we go home and just come in for the antibiotics every day, then?

I want to scream;

"If it's money you want, I know people!" (I really don't, everyone I know is broke as fuck).

"I can get you money, or, or jewelry!" (Again, no chance. Zero. Unless you like shards of broken glass because if you hold it just right it reflects light quite prettily or if it cuts you and you bleed profusely all over it, it can almost resemble a ruby, especially if you are crying and/or drunk whilst looking at it).

I am met with firm resistance.

We get a lovely private room with one giant cot in the middle.

"Urm, excuse me miss Sister Nurse, Healer of children and Warden of the North. Might I bother you for a bed, or a mattress even, so I can bed-share with my tot?"

"No"

"Maybe a blanket? On the floor?"

"No can doozeville, baby doll"

Lovely.

I sleep in the cot, next to Danté.

The next morning I hobble into the matron's office, my neck still bent at a 90% angle and mewl at her "Please...I beg of you. A bed. My kingdom for a bed!" 

(My kingdom's coffers are empty but I can offer you four cats, one of which pees everywhere because she is anxious all the time, Lord knows about what, and a "pre-loved" (eye-roll) Rav4 that is bankrupting me.)

"If we do it for you, we must do it for everyone, and we can't"

I stare pointedly at the empty ward.

"You are putting me in a very difficult position" she says.

Yeah? Try sleeping in a cot.

"How might one go for a smoke up in this bitch?" I ask one of the friendlier looking nurses.

"Well, how do you do it at home?"

"I give her to her dad"

"Well there ain't no dad here"

Bitch.

"What do you do when he's not around?"

"I take her with me and give her an occasional pull"

"She can't go with you to the smoking area"

Big surprise...I almost DIED with surprise.

I end up locking her in her cot and going for a very unsatisfying, guilt ridden cigarette.

When I get back, they had expertly found a vein in her foot and inserted the new drip without her even crying. It is also secured with something resembling duct tape. Good job, pediatric ward.

"Why do emergency staff do anything? Can't they just fill in forms and send us to you guys to do stuff?"

"No"

Another shocker.

Food was nice, though.

By the third day I had gotten my cot-sleeping skills honed. Not so bad if you're dead tired from wandering the halls, trying to navigate security doors with a toddler on the hip and a drip pole-roller-thingy in your hand.

The hospital is old and has the markings of Dutch architecture. The halls smack of history and as the baby and I walk along, I dream up stories about how it came to be and how it might have been a hundred years ago when it was first built.

Incidentally, changing pull ups when your toddler has a drip attached to her foot is hard.

"You have to wiggle the whole thing from the end of the drip right through to her bum. Pull ups are a BIG problem" says the nurse who I've noticed thinks everything is a big problem.

"Well, when I was packing this diaper bag I had no idea my kid would have a drip in her foot later on. Can't we just disconnect it quickly?"

"No, it's an infection risk. And that's a BIG problem"

Eventually Danté's swollen eye calmed down and we were released back into society, cringing and blinking owlishly at the light as we exited the building.

Gosh, I keep taking my health and the health of my kids for granted.

Just kdding, they (and I) are sick all the damn time and I pray the nights away.

"A creche is like a snake. If you keep toying with it, eventually it will bite you" sez the pediatrician.

Okay, lady. We'll talk again when you have your own little ray of sunshine that makes you dream of lovely, snake-creches that look after and entertain them for four to eight blissful hours of the day during which you can have a life and frolick in the wilderness.

Just kidding, I love them so much, I cry every day I drop them off at school.

JUST KIDDING, HAHA, I CRY WITH RELIEF!

Triple just kidding. I love them so much it breaks my heart but I allow myself to get tired and frustrated and overwhelmed.

Mothering is haaaaaard, man.

But please do it. 

Have kids. 

Misery (and unimaginable fulfillment and joy) loves company in the pediatric ward.