Remarkable Week for Viv Child

The Vivirito Times
13 May 2005
focus section

This is one of those stories that tugs at your heartstrings. If anyone is deserving for an award for making it through this past week, it is Erin Michelle.

She has suffered a series of health mishaps that would leave a normal person in bed for days. But Mishy Moo is currently active and playful in the face of adversity. "It's amazing," said her mother, "She has had such a tough week-- medically-- made harder only by her intolerant siblings. She did not make it through a full day of school."

Erin started off the week with one tooth filling-- not so bad considering how many it could have been given the Vivirito kids' hygiene habits.

But Tuesday it really began to slide downhill. At a party for a teacher (shortly after her mother had left school), Erin was whacked in the head with a golf club. Mother was called by the school nurse-- who is beginning to know her number by heart-- and asked to return to school to pick up her daughter. Later in the day, Erin received stitches for the gash in her head.

"I expected to see blood running down her face, the way the nurse described it," Mother said. "The wound wasn't that bad, but it was pretty deep." Erin was beside herself for missing the teacher's party.

"I just couldn't believe it happened to me on this day," she said, "of all days." But she received the stitches and returned to school on Tuesday morning.

That afternoon though mother received another call from the nurse. Erin was in the office complaining of a headache. Mother sent Father to school with some asprin to relieve the poor girl of her pain. Half an hour later, Father returned with Erin and vomit on the van floor.

Mother had been called into school to substitute Thursday morning but was not needed; she then went to run errands. After two days of stomach sickness Erin again attempted school that day only to again call home with another complaint of a headache. Father had mother's cellular telephone, so he was again designated to pick her up in yet another fit of vomiting.

Friday morning Erin did not attempt to attend school.

It remains uncertain whether the cause of Erin's nausea was a flu bug, a concussion, or migraines.

But perhaps the biggest tribulation of Mishy's dilemma was the constant berating of her by her siblings, especially one brother. "He was slobbering away at his cereal while they were at the computer," Mother recalls, "when she asked me to ask him not to eat by her."

Michael responded with hostility, claiming that the suggestion for him to move was "ridiculous" and suggesting that the request was "selfish" and "bratty."

For Erin to deal with such hostility during a week of such arduous health-related problems is truly an attestment to her character. The VT hereby salutes Erin for her bravery in the male-dominated and patriarchial-abiding household. If it cannot offer anything else, let these words, and free frostys at Wendy's, console her.

Nobody-- except maybe her courageous mother-- deserves a salute more than poor Mishy. This is ours, from all of us at the Vivirito Times.