This was my first time going to the St. Patrick's Day parade. My Mom says I went to the one in Shawnee when I was little, but I don't remember it. And in any case, this was the real thing, the Kansas City St. Patrick's Day parade.
Because this is the day when we're all Irish. And by Irish, I mean drunk and disorderly by ten in the morning.
But hey, it's not just green t-shirts and doo-rags for me: my daughter's middle names are Gael and Erin. My middle name is Erin, even though it's a girlie name. Even though I also have some obvious German ancestry (I'm reasonably sure Limbach is not Irish).
So we got downtown, and I could tell right away where I wanted to be: in that line of traffic that's not really moving. Which really turned out to be quicker than I expected.
We parked by Town Topic, in a spot I thought was at least defensible as plausibly meant for parking. It was also, possibly, part of a driveway, but not one that has been used since Pendergast's day.
We walked about eight blocks, and I thought I'd spotted where the parade would go past. Except it wasn't a bunch of bystanders, it was a bunch of people waiting to march.
A man assured me we could march with them. We were all wearing green and that's all they cared about.
Em was for it, at first. We were at the very back of the staging ground. Someone handed me a brochure about the 'real' St. Patrick (sans funny name, 'Maewyn Succat'). It wasn't that I couldn't bear the thought of walking from Pershing & Main to Truman Road with the International House of Prayer, but these people weren't even drunk.
Okay, I wasn't either. Still, it's odd to see so many green shirts and nobody obviously dissolute in this context.
The thing that made us move on was when I realized we would see precisely none of the parade if we hung out there. We'd be in the parade, sure, when everyone is fleeing to beat the traffic, but this was the ass end of the parade.
We found our spots, weaving between people in green wigs gulping plastic cups of Harp and Guinness. It was tricky finding a place where the girls could see the parade over the heads of the early arrivals, but we did.
And we saw some cool stuff. Riverdance wannabes, a fire truck, a car so big I couldn't get it all in frame, the oldest football fan alive, a big-ass balloon with a bunch of bar staff holding it down.
People with enviable apartments right on the parade route and an unhealthy reverence for Extreme Makover Home Edition.
But about twenty minutes in, I turned to Mo to say, 'Isn't that cool?' By way of an answer, she turned sharply to the left and urinated.
I don't even remember what it was I thought she'd find cool. But I suddenly realized, the Diastat is eight blocks away.
Luckily, this was just a partial, and not even a long one. And, if she'd gone into a full blown seizure, I suppose I could have knocked one of the ubiquitous motorcycle cops off his mount and conscripted his help.
It was a long walk back to the car. I'm sure longer for Mo, spaced out and pee soaked. Em was getting agitated at the crowd for not realizing a VIP was coming through in trouble, though really it was pretty easy to get around folks.
We have to switch Mo's medicine anyway. The Tegretol had quit working, and she's been on Trileptal since summer with much better results. But her new insurance won't cover it, and it's $508 a month retail. Hopefully whatever she switches to will do an even better job. A kid ought to be able to watch a damn parade without her brain misfiring.
2 comments:
Wow, sorry to hear about Mo. Have you tried to get help through the patient assistance program for Trileptal? If you need help let me know. I'll see what I can do or see if I can speak with one of the drug reps when they come in. If they change her medication I too hope they give her something that seems to work as well, and is covered. That is such a horrible burden...
Other than that-that was a huge parade. They don't do parades like that here.
Finding funding or alteratives to Trileptal is more the baleywick of the Artist Formerly Known as Frau Lobster. It's her insurance that won't pay for it. When we divorced, I told my attorney I wanted the girls' coverage to be one of my responsibilities, but I was assuming I had a relatively secure gig. I had pretty good coverage that was 100% employer paid at the time.
The Ex tells me she's knocked on all the doors and the answer is no. Partly because it's too expensive. Multi-Services, for instance, paid the $50 copay for the Diastat when the Ex was in a pinch, but that was $50 and one time. This is over $500 every single month.
There's a ton of seizure meds on the market. For that matter, if Mo would take pills without chewing them, there's a Trileptal pill she could take, and they'd over that. The liquid suspension is because she chews every damned pill. Even Prozac, and I can tell from her face it's got to be like pecan shells.
It is a big-ass parade, by the way. I doubt it would be the Macy's Thanksgiving Day in New York, but it's improbably large for a city this size. I hear it started with three drunk Irish dudes walking across the street back in 19-Oh-Somthing.
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