The medical maladies just keep coming.
Lil' Bit busted up his face again and I have no idea how. I was in the shower and I heard a loud boom. I stood perfectly still, listening for the ensuing screams. It's a thing most mommies can do, determine the severity of a wound by the tone of the scream. Nothing... only quiet. I breathe a small sigh of relief confident that the sound I heard was probably just something heavy & easily broken falling on the floor. A few minutes later, Lil' Bit comes in the bathroom, smiling and bloody. He has several new scrapes below his eye that look like road rash and a new cut that crisscrosses the healing dining room table wound. He proudly points to his eyebrow, and says, "Owwie!" I quickly rinse out my conditioner, plan to shave my legs tomorrow and dry off as fast as I can. I got the Bit cleaned up and the injury was minor, just looked horrific and bled a lot. I have no idea what he did. I searched around the house for a blood trail, pieces of flesh, anything that would give me a clue as to what happened. Nothing, no forensic evidence.
Big Red came home from school on Monday saying that his toe hurt during music class and his teacher gave him a band aid. I looked and it was a little irritated but nothing alarming. This is the same toe that he dropped the fireplace shovel on over the holiday break. The nail is fairly battered and I've been keeping an eye on it to make sure it didn't become ingrown.
Tuesday, Lil' Bit broke out in a rash from his chin to his knees.
Wednesday night, the boys were rough housing in the living room and Lil' Bit made contact with the toe sending Big Red into a frenzy. This time when I looked, I was shocked. It looked like a cartoon digit after coming in contact with an ACME anvil. I maintained my bearing and asked Big Red a few questions about it. The next morning I called the pediatrician's office and got an appointment for the afternoon. I kept Big Red home from school just make sure nothing happened to it. I could imagine that phone call, "Yes, Big Red's Mom. This is the school nurse. We need you come pick him up, his toe exploded during circle time."
When we got to the doc, she took one look at it, and explained they did not have the ability to handle this situation in the office. We would need to go the ER. Before she moved on to the next patient, I showed her Lil' Bit's belly and she said there had been a rash of rashes lately. It's nothing to be worried about. It's the last phase of a virus that is going around, non-contagious and will clear up shortly. Give him a 1/2 tsp of Benedryl at bedtime to help the itching. That was the best news I got all week! Drug the kiddo at bedtime!
So we loaded back up in the car and made our way to the ER. I wasn't anticipating spending an extended amount of time away from the house so I only brought a couple of monster trucks for entertainment and a juice box for each child. The nurses were wonderful and turned the waiting room TV to kid friendly programming and gave us coloring books, crayons and stickers. One of the nurses actually remembered our names from the last visit.
About an hour into our three and half hour adventure, the munchkins were hankering for some food. I dug into my purse and found a bag of M&Ms. I shook the bag and told the boys to guess what color would come out first. Then we celebrated if the candy that came out of the bag was the color we had guessed and feigned extreme disappointment if it was not. We rotated between who would get the M&M. First Lil' Bit, then Big Red, and finally Momma. Everyone had to be completely finished before the next round would begin. That one bag of candy lasted for over 30 minutes!
Another 2 hours later, the medical team drained his toe, swabbed it to test for MRSA and gave us a RX for some majorly strong antibiotics. We have to follow up with the pediatrician and I'm going to request a referral to a podiatrist. The ER doc didn't see where the nail was ingrown and had no real clue what caused the infection. I suspect things will be easier to identify once the infection and swelling has gone down.
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Such is life with boys. For all of the black eyes, colds, rashes, sprained ankles and cartoon toes, I am forever thankful that nothing has been serious. I would rather spend hours in the ER with my children for something they did to themselves in the course of being rambunctious boys than minutes as patients with something that can't be helped. Cheers to good health!
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