and then, all of a sudden...

Today started off as any other day at MamaTea's house - which is to say we didn't really have a concrete plan, but did have a list of many things we could do.

Like freezing sweet corn. Making salsa. Cutting and using the giant bag of apples donated to us from a friend. Shooting some arrows. Catching frogs. Collecting acorns.

Uh....yeah. Searching over that list...I don't see visit urgent care with child having severe reaction to bee sting.

Darn. I must have forgotten to write it down on the list of suggestions.

Ooky, who has been stung numerous times (without reaction) since he was old enough to walk, apparently tangled with the wrong bee today. Perhaps a mad mama who was having a bad day. Or some freak bee with extra terrible poison. Or maybe it was just "one of those things".

About eight minutes after he'd been stung, his ankle started swelling.
About three minutes later, Ooky started complaining about being itchy.
When MamaTea lifted his shirt to investigate the intense itching, she discovered a lovely spattering of hives all over his stomach and chest. Kid you not, if you sat there for a minute, you could watch them pop up on his skin. Kind of like something out of a weird horror flick.

Of course I didn't sit there to watch anything. We quickly plopped ourselves into the speedracer mini van and hightailed it to the nearest Urgent Care. All the while listening to the darling in the backseat coughing. Saying he was going to puke. And becoming less and less able to form actual words because his face or lips or whatever else was becoming nice and fat, getting in the way of itself.

All I could keep thinking was but he's never had a reaction before.

He's fine now. They pumped some good strong meds into Mr. Ooky to reverse the reaction and watched him like a hawk for a couple hours. His heart rate went back to normal, his oxygen levels came up, and he started talking (and making sense) again. Eventually the doctor released him with a couple prescriptions and we were on our way back to normal life.

Well...if you can call our life normal. ;)

If all for spontaneity. I'm down with living a fluid life. But rushing a kid into urgent care with very real thoughts of "just keep breathing, just keep breathing" running through your head was not what I had in mind as spontaneous or fluid. But, in a weird way, its ok.

It makes you stop.
It brings you back.
You take a second look.

You know, life goes on...business as usual...but every so often, all of a sudden, it changes. Things are what they are. And then all of a sudden, they're not.

Life is funny that way. Ain't it?