Medical Misery

Poor Johsua has had a very tough week. It all started on Saturday night. He woke me up at 2:30 in the morning complaining that his ear hurt. I managed to get him back to sleep until 5:30 when we woke up screaming that his ear hurt. I tried Tylenol since he wouldn't eat anything and he slept fitfully until 7 when the screaming reconvened. After milk, some Advil and some old ear drops that I managed to find we got the crying down to a whimper. A long morning in the pediatric urgent care confirmed a massive ear infection. We had already started down the path a couple weeks ago with some other testing for Joshua. Throughout his little life, Joshua has been king of the blowout diaper. When he was really little, I attributed it to being breastfed. Everyone warned me of the constipation to come when he started solid food...never happened. We had talked to the pediatrician before about it but his growth rate has always been way above average so we didn't pursue anything at that time. Lately, it seems to have gotten worse and it is interfering with potty training. Two weeks ago he had a stool sample test done. If any of you have ever had to do a collection for that, I feel for you! Few things gross me out. I deal with blood and saliva all day long but this was almost too much for me. Of course, Eric was no help what so ever as he stood gagging in the corner! Everything came back normal and since he was still symptomatic we wound up back in the pediatrician's office on Thursday.

I thought about cancelling the appointment but figured if nothing else we could have his ears checked to make sure they were responding to the antibiotic. The antibiotic seems to be doing its job but must taste awful. Poor little guy does a full body shudder evertime he has to swallow it down. Our next course of action in the great gastric mystery was to draw blood and run several tests to look for allergies or malabsorption syndromes. That's when all the real fun began. I was so proud of Joshua. It was the first time our doctor was able to examine him without him screaming like a banshee. I think we took one step forward and two giant steps back with the blood draw experience! I had asked the nurses to just send us to the lab if they thought he was going to be hard to draw blood on. I am a hard stick and have had veins blown before...not a pleasant experience and one I wanted to save Joshua from. They held him down...all three of them and put the turnequet on. A vein came popping straight up and I thought we had it made. Unfortunately they used too large a suction device and blew the vein. Without pausing to let him calm down, they switched to the other side, got in the vein and somehow managed to blow that one too. They got some blood but not enough. By this time, Joshua is hysterical, I'm ready to scream at someone and we've been there for an hour and a half.

Long story short, we have to go to a lab and try the blood draw again. I had to take my poor little guy back to school since I had a full afternoon of patients ( I had missed a day and a half at the beginning of the week with a stomach bug and all of them had been rescheduled once already). To top off his day, he slipped on our bed making a grab for one of the dogs and hit the footboard. He woke up this morning with big bruises on both arms and a black eye (the flash washes out the color...it's really dark)! He is so pale that any and every bruise comes up with a lurid purple and black swirl and progresses to the lovely greens and yellows. It seems to take weeks for them to fade entirely! Next week is bound to be a better week.....please!