A week ago Thursday, when William climbed into the car, I could see his giant swollen lymph node in my rearview mirror. I asked him if it hurt, and he said no, but after a google search of all the terrible things that it could be, I made him an appointment the next morning.
The appointment wasn't until the afternoon, and when I went to pick him up from school, he wasn't in his classroom, and he wasn't in the office. It turns out that he complained of pain while swallowing to his teacher just before I arrived and he was going to be checked out by the stand in nurse.
When we arrived at her office, he was extremely sedate and sat or laid each room we were moved to. She tested him for strep, which came back positive, and he also had a touch of pneumonia, in the lower region of one of his lungs.
She prescribed him the 2nd tier of antibiotic, because she wanted to make sure he kicked the strep. She had see more cases of pneumonia at her practice in the past three months, than in the past 5 years combined. She said that he would probably crash, then slowly improve, as he coughed, but if he did not improve in 48 hours, not to wait for her and instead go to the urgent care.
The medicine itself wasn't bad and William had no trouble with it. He did crash on Saturday, and slept somewhere around 16 hours. On Sunday he seemed to have improved drastically, so we continued with our plan to celebrate daddy's birthday at chuck e cheese.
He started showing signs of slowing down, which was understandable considering all he was fighting, but in the car he fell asleep. Billy and I discussed whether or not this merited a weekend trip to the hospital. When we came into the house, he curled up in the chair closest to the door, and fell asleep. Ultimately, I ended up taking him to the urgent care, but they sent us along to the ER since they didn't have any imaging machines.
The wait in the lobby was almost two hours, then they gave him a room, but he wasn't allowed to eat. They drew blood, and I gave a summary of his complex medical history, a few times. The resident didn't correct me, but was surprised that I really meant hypophosphatasia and not hypophosphatemia.
He was still not allowed to eat, until they were certain that he wouldn't need an ultrasound. The strep test came back negative (yay!) but he still had pneumonia in his lung. He was finally cleared to eat, and then he slept.
As late as it was, I crawled in next to him, since he wasn't hooked up to anything. He was sound asleep and I was almost asleep when they gave us the go ahead to leave. They gave him the next tier antibiotic which we were able to procure from the 24-hour pharmacy in the lobby.
It is foul smelling, so after each dose (3x a day,) he gets some ice cream. He stayed 'home' with me on Monday, and was able to rest some. On Tuesday, he went to school, happily, I did give his teacher the run down, and apologized, but my chaperone commitment fell at a poor time. = ( The ER doctor wanted us to follow up with his regular doctor on Tuesday, so we made it happen.
He was still not himself, and was resting in the back of the classroom when I went to collect him. The doctor was concerned and gave him a steroid, and prescription for an inhaler, but before we left their office (in a huge rush) he had a breathing treatment. He thought the 'smoke' coming out of the sides of the mask was entertaining.
Thankful for good doctors and a healing little boy. oh, and that my mom is back. so.thankful.
later days
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