The Harrowing/Heartwarming Parent Moment of the Week

I’m afraid that our parent moment this week fits firmly into the “Harrowing” category.

As is common, I was out in our living room writing when sweet boy #2 stumbled out of the bedroom all sleepy eyed and mussy haired and adorable beyond the legal limits. But what was not common was one half of his face. The left side of his face was totally swollen up! His eye was just a little slit and the skin was pink and hot to the touch.

So I called the nurse at our Dr’s office. She said that our Dr. wouldn’t be in until 10 o’clock but that he would want to see sweet boy #2 immediately. So off I zoomed, three boys in tow. Luckily I remembered the backpack so that I could entrap sweet boy #3 within its various buckles and still have a hand for each of the big boys. Our Dr. said “Hmmmm” and “Aaaaaa” and prescribed some Benadryl and an antibiotic. We went home with instructions to check in in the evening and call if anything got worse.

At 3:00 am sweet boy #2 woke up with a bad dream and so I went to give him his new meds. His face was worse. The left eye was swollen shut. So I called the on-call Dr. (who happened to be our own Dr. that night) and he sleepily instructed us to proceed to the emergency room.

I left the other boys with the hunky hubby and drug sweet boy #2 out of bed and plopped him into his car seat. We arrived at the emergency room and a sleepy ER Dr. stumbled into our room and told the nurses to prepare sweet boy #2 for an IV. They gave him an antibiotic through the IV and that little boy was so incredibly brave. One nurse couldn’t poke him. He gave her his arm and she stated that she just couldn’t crush his trust in humanity and forced the male nurse to insert his IV. We read “The Body Book”
a good many times and learned all about red blood cells, platelets, and plasma. And then I made it home in time to fix and administer breakfast to our herd.

Since I was having trouble keeping our car from plumeting off the road and exploding in a fiery inferno, the hunky hubby drove sweet boy #2 down to see our Dr. (who came in on his vacation) later that afternoon. His improvement was remarkable. They left the IV in another night but our EMT neighbor took it out the next day. Apparently the blood work says that sweet boy #2 is allergic to something. Now all we have to do is ascertain what that something is…without a repeat emergency room visit. Hmmmm.