Oy! An Abscess

I am totally exhausted and should be in bed…but I wanted to blog my weekend before the details were gone.

I woke up Friday morning a bit frantic in anticipation of my family’s arrival. I only had about four hours to get the house looking as clean as I want them to think I keep it. I quickly put all the kids to work with chores around the house. Josh was “Sharking” the stairs when he fell down the stairs onto his hurt foot…let me back up. Josh came to me Wednesday night and told me he could feel his heart beating in his foot (insert eye roll). I told him to go to bed! The next morning he told me his foot was hurting and showed me a very small bump. It looked a little like a planter’s wart to me…back to Friday morning, falling down the stairs, etc. At first I am annoyed (insert another eye roll). Then when he doesn’t stop crying, I take a look at his foot. It has doubled in size to almost the size of a quarter and has turned black! I immediately called the doctor and got an appointment for an hour later. In the waiting room, small red stripes started to radiate from his bump and crawl up his ankle. We weren’t in the doctor’s office for 2 minutes (and 60 bucks I might add) before she rushed us off to the hospital ER to meet the pediatric surgeon. It was all happening so fast I wasn’t really thinking it was a big deal or necessary that we go to the ER.

Houston, traffic, traffic, traffic. We get to the ER around 1:00 PM and they quickly get us checked in, triaged and in a room. A male nurse (that is kind of sexist to point out it was a male nurse, but he was a male nurse) came in and started an IV and put him on IV antibiotics. A research nurse comes in and asks if I would be willing to participate in a study about why there is so much Staph infection in Houston…At this point I think, I guess it’s a Staph infection. The waiting begins…in the meantime, no cleaning is being done at home and my guests are arriving any minute. I am still optimistic I will be home to greet them shortly. More waiting, ER doctor consults, more waiting. More waiting, nurses, orderlies, doctors come in, more waiting. Finally around 6:00 PM the Pediatric surgeon (we’ll call him Dr. Oy) comes in. Dr. Oy tells me Josh has a Staph infected abscess that needs to be removed and since he already has an IV, we should just put him under. He says we need to be admitted and stay for a couple days so we can make sure everything is okay. WHAT! I was truly worried about Josh, but at the same time I have all these people at my house and I don’t want to spend the next three days at the hospital. I asked Dr. Oy if we could possibly go home that night and he was not pleased with my lack of respect for his MD. We negotiated back and forth for the next 30 minutes and finally after a few tears (from Josh, I was holding mine back) and a pinky swear (Josh also) that we would come back if it didn’t get better, I won. The later it got, the more upset Josh got. He was sad because everyone back home was “having fun” without him and he was really nervous about how bad the surgery was going to hurt. The “childlike” specialist came in with her kid speak and her pictures, and I think it actually worked. He seemed to feel much better after she explained it all to him.

More waiting. The whole gang came up to visit and Dad stayed with Josh while I went to get something to eat.

MORE WAITING!!!!

At 10:30 PM we finally got into surgery. It was hard to watch them wheel your child away for surgery while you just waited in the hall. I tried not to think bad thoughts, but they pushed their way to the front of my mind a few times. You always here those horror stories about the person who didn’t know they were allergic to anesthesia until it was too late. Luckily, the surgery only lasted about 20 minutes and then we got to be with him when he woke up in the recovery room. The doctor stuck to his word, and let us go home about an hour later. We finally arrived home around 1:00 AM with only a couple barf bag stops on the way home. Josh slept like a rock. I am not sure if it was the left over morphine in his system or the effects of his traumatic day.

The weekend didn’t stop there, but I am going to have to wait until tomorrow, my bed is calling me…