You'd never believe what happened....

You know, you just can't make this stuff up. After our exciting and nerve frazzling drive to and from Lake Junaluska last night, we arrived home with a feverish girl. She was certainly cooler upon arrival than upon greeting her in her bed. When your friends say, "We gave her Advil an hour and a half ago. The fever is down to 103.5," yeah not good.  This is when I started trying to crawl out of my own skin with worry. She screamed over every bump and moaned from the pain in her head. Good times. We had all the preparations in place to take her directly to the ER, but changed our minds upon arriving at home. The fever was down and she requested bed. Okay. When I got up to prepare for work this morning, the hub checked S's temp, gave her more drugs and reported that she was still feeling bad. I went to work feeling that she was in capable hands that would call me if necessary. And they did halfway through service. She was writhing in abdominal pain. Not good. I went home and readied a bag for the hospital. Once my brother and sister inlaw arrived to take care of kidlets, we took off to Children's. We were dropped off at the door and walked in to find something I had never seen before: an empty waiting room. Crazy! They asked us if we really needed to be seen in the ER and I said I sure hoped we weren't overreacting. We got back to a room quickly. The PA saw us first, after the nurse. I loved her, well, all of them. We had a bad doc with the last trip(concussion)who texted the whole time during the consult, so we were a bit gun shy. She was incredible! We were assured that there was something very concerning with our daughter and she needed to be in the ER and was in the right place. During my life as a social worker, many of my charges used the ER as their primary care physicians which never sat well with anybody. I always worry about going there and whether our malady of the moment is emergency worthy. Blessed assurance for sure! After having an angel of a Child Life Specialist come in and explain every detail of how an IV worked to S, leaving no question unanswered, she brought her ipad in and played games with S while the IV was put in. Then they partially drained her, but were nice enough to leave some blood for later. Then she went for xrays. Then we waited and waited and listened to her painfully beg for food and drink. Then the doc came in. I immediately knew I was going to love him. He was so good with our girl, answering every question and explaining everything and showing how everything worked. He asked some alarming questions and then said that they had some concerns about her liver. I immediately went into panic mode. Livers are kind of necessary and I hate to hear when they are not as they should be. The terms "mono" and "Hepatitis A" were thrown around. Again, not happy terms. He ordered more bloodwork, which meant more waiting. Yawn. Thank goodness for iphones and concerned friends texting. When he finally came back in, the doc had surprising news. Apparently our 11yr old has the health problems of a seasoned senior citizen and the gall bladder to match. It is a rare, but actual, symptom of mono. She will be seeing a surgeon tomorrow to see if it can heal on its own or if it needs to come out. S was fine until he told her she couldn't eat or drink anything. Then the tears came. Hard and fast and bitter. Our sweet doctor wiped them carefully from her cheeks and explained the reason this was necessary. Love him! He left and said he was going to start her on antibiotics and would be admitting her into a room. Great. Right before TCAPS. Great. The nurse came in and started her on her first antibiotic, Cipro. About three minutes in, she started digging at her arm, which had turned red and itchy and angry. Guess we found that elusive allergy. They stopped that quickly, flushed her out and shot her full of Benadryl. Take two. Then came the CT scan and a trip back to them exam room. Now she is nestled in her actual room, with her nurse Deb who looks like her homeroom teacher. In fact, in a morphine craze, she started saying, "Why is my social studies teacher here? It is not test time yet." Oh dear.

Tomorrow will bring with it interesting times, I reckon. Right now I'm going to sip my milk shake that the hub brought me and get ready for bed on a makeshift couch something. Sweet dreams, friends.
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