crazy day

This morning I made sure to take all of my allergy medicine and so far it seems to have calmed my cough some. At least there has been no vomiting today so far. My voice is getting worse though, just sounding really grizzly and congested. And I've been sooooo tired today. I'm not sure if that is from the allergy medicine, the allergies themselves, or the nyquil I took last night. This morning I went to a crazy meeting (more on that in a second), then went into the office for about thirty minutes. By noon I was so tired I could not keep my head up, so I went home and slept for almost two hours. Then I went back into the office and called my doctor who agreed to see me in about an hour. I explained that my main symptoms now were exhaustion and a cough/congestion. She decided to do some blood tests and put me on an antibiotic. She thinks it might be a sinus infection, even though I don't have a fever or some of the other symptoms. Hopefully that will work because I'm really tired of not feeling well. And now I'm ready for my second nap of the day.

But first, my crazy meeting: We had an early childhood/child abuse prevention summit this morning. It was meant to bring community members together to discuss what we can do to prevent child abuse in light of the 6 child abuse related deaths in Wichita so far this year to children under age 3. But somehow it got posted in the Eagle earlier this week, so we were prepared for a bigger audience with some alternate agendas. And sure enough, that's we got. We tried to keep discussions focused on how we can prevent child abuse and not about all the problems with the child welfare (foster care) system. We had one representative from the pro life community who wanted us to focus on shutting down Tiller, pointing out that abortion is legalized child abuse and we need to put an end to it. Valid point, but not where we wanted to focus the meeting. Then we had some parents who had bad experiences with the foster care system who wanted us to focus on fixing the system and redefining child abuse (they feel too many children get removed from their homes when it isn't necessary). Also a valid point, but still not where we wanted to go. Then we had the District Attorney who wanted to talk about homicides to children over the past 20 years (and get some camera time, which at least one of the tv stations was happy to give her). I understand that is her framework based on her job, but still not where we wanted to go. The meeting ended without any resolution, which means there will probably need to be future meetings. We even had some protestors out in front with signs that said "system abuse is child abuse". Sigh.

Nap time now.