Tomorrow

I have titled and retitled this post a thousand times (Is "retitled" a word? Just go with it.), and I've only just begun to even write it! I come to you tonight, humbly asking for a little prayer, but not necessarily for the reason you might expect.

I don't remember if I have shared this on the blog, but for the past 2-3 months, Monkey has been having chronic headaches. He's always gotten headaches easily, and has often gone through periods of a week or so where he'll get them daily. But when he approached the one-month mark in April, the school nurse and I had a chat about what to do next. We had his eyes checked (they are great), we made sure he was drinking lots of water during the day. What next? We went to our pediatrician, and for the sake of maintaining my image as a sweet, polite, genteel lady (That's how you all see me, right?), I'll just say that she wasn't helpful. And leave it at that. And just swallow the pain from biting my tongue.

ANYWAY, I took him to a neurologist, who believes that Monkey is suffering from a combination of tension headaches and migraines, but he wants to take a closer look, just in case. He scheduled us for an EEG, which is tomorrow.

Think I'm nervous about the EEG? I am. But maybe not for the "right" reasons.

I'm really not worried about the results, not much anyway. I am becoming more and more convinced that much of his problem stems from the fluorsecent lights at the school (He hasn't had a headache since Wednesday, the last day that he spent any real time in the school building. Thursday was their last day for the year, but he was on an all-day field trip that day.), and I don't expect there to be any major findings from this test or the MRI that the doctor wants to do next. (Thanks for helping us reach our deductible for the fourth year in a row, doc.)

I'm more worried about the LOGISTICS of the test. You see, they really want him to fall asleep for the EEG, so our pre-test instructions call for us to keep him up until midnight tonight... and then wake him up at 3 AM. For the day. 3 AM. NOTHING good happens at 3 AM. Then I need to keep him up until the test, which is at 10:30 tomorrow morning. It takes approximately 1.5 hours, after which we'll see the doctor. So just to recap, here's our gameplan for our 6-year-old: stay up until midnight, sleep for THREE HOURS, then wake up (and STAY awake), go to a doctor's office, get him back to sleep (ha ha) with electrodes all over his head, then wake him up again after an hour or so, then stay up until bedtime tomorrow night.

Yep, THAT has my stomach in knots a little. Because I'm not very patient with whiny children. Because I have two other kids who don't really care how much sleep anybody else gets or how that might affect their behavior. Because I'm the one getting up at 3 AM. (Mr. Fantastic is staying up with both big kids until midnight. I can hear the Wii as I type.) Because Monkey is already my emotional, (overly)sensitive child.

And maybe because deep down, I might be just a little bit worried about the results, too.

So if you read this tonight, could you pray that this whole staying up until midnight and getting up at 3 AM thing goes smoothly? And if you are reading this on Monday morning, I'd appreciate a prayer or two for Monkey and me as we head to the neurologist's office. Please pray that he will actually sleep during the test, that I will have peace (which I really do mostly have right now) (mostly), and that we will both be functional until we can get a good night's rest (and that I will remember that *I* am the adult and need to act like one, even when he is not acting like the mature, sophisticated 6-year-old that I feel he should be).

Thanks, friends. I'll keep you posted.