What a Weekend!

This holiday weekend our plans were to go camping with Paul's family at the annual camp out at Honeyman State Park south of Florence. We had the trailer mostly packed the night before so we could leave when Drew got home from school early Friday. We received a phone call at 8 am from Paul's brother-in-law, letting us know that Paul's mom was in the ER with what turned out to be a heart attack. Luckily, she was feeling sick and got there before she had the heart attack so they were immediately able to help her. We changed our plans to a wait-and-see approach. If she was stable and doing well we would maybe go camping, since neither one of us wanted to break it to the kids that we weren't. I admit I wasn't thrilled with the idea of camping for 3 days in the freezing rain on the coast, but that would have been a million times better than how the weekend eventually turned out!

We ended up parking the trailer at my parent's house and Paul visited his mom in the ICU. She was very sick so we decided we would at least spend the night there and see what the next day brought us. She was still pretty sick that day so we decided the thrill of the idea of camping was gone and we would probably spend one more night and then go home. Well, Saturday morning Mason woke up crying because his hip hurt. I thought it was probably a pulled muscle or something from playing so hard with his cousins on Friday. He was actually limping so I knew it was something other than a sore muscle. He kind of limped around all day, but he also went on a long nature walk with us and jumped on the trampoline at his cousins' house so I figured he was OK. That evening he was complaining that his knee on the same leg hurt. Then he woke up at 4 in the morning crying in pain and couldn't walk to the bathroom. He was also saying his ankle hurt. So I packed him up and off we went to Urgent Care while Paul had the girls and went to his mom's house to do some things. I took grandpa along too so he could heft Mason's 48 lbs in and out of chairs for me. At this point Mason was totally unable to put any pressure on his left leg. At Urgent Care he had x-rays done, which ruled out a dislocation or a fracture, but it didn't show anything about the fluids in the hip joint. The doc said if it was an adult he would send them home to rest for a few days but they don't mess around with kids and pain. He flinched as I a told him of Mason's recent bout with Scarlet Fever and sent us on the the ER. At the same hospital grandma was at! When we got there a very nice nurse was able to guess Mason's name and his owie (Urgent care called ahead) and Mason was extremely impressed. He even got a wheelchair ride! We were making a list of all the things he had to tell Drew about. At the ER he had his blood drawn, which thankfully Paul happened to be there for to help hold him down, and they left the tube thingy there in case they needed it later. Ugh. Not fun. He also got to pee in a jug and was very impressed at how full he got it. He had an ultrasound done and they discovered an excess amount of fluid in his joint. The resident on call decided he wasn't knowledgeable enough to make a call whether his joint was just irritated or whether it was infected so he called in his boss, the big gun with 30 years of experience. Thankfully he was in charge from then on so we know we got the best care possible. They were pretty certain that it was just irritated and would heal on its own in a few days of bed rest, but they wanted to be 100% sure it wasn't infected because that affects growth plates and bone and can do all kinds of nasty damage. So they decided to tap his hip for a sample of the fluid. Tapping a joint for fluid means sticking a LONG needle directly into the joint and sucking out the fluid. UGH! They recommended knocking him out and I thought that was a great idea! Until they wheeled him into a room with about 15 adults and scary equipment and told me to wait in the hall. I asked if I could kiss him first and they let me. I tried my best to give him a pep talk but I would have been scared if I was a 5 year old kid all alone with that stuff too. I could hear him crying and yelling as they were moving him around and trying to hook his IV up to the knock-out drugs. I will admit that I shed a tear or two at this point also. I just wanted to hold his hand and be there with him! By this time I had been with Mason for 8 hours and Paul and I decided to switch places and he would take over admitting him to the hospital for the night and stay with him, since they didn't want to do an invasive procedure and then just send him home. Also, if it was infected he would need immediate surgery to clean out the joint. I went back to the girls and Paul stayed with Mase for the night. Luckily the fluid was not infected and it was just irritated. They told us it was probably related to his scarlet fever. Scary stuff! I had no idea it could affect someone so badly a month later. I will keep my eye on Darcy now too since she had it the same time Mason did. We also learned that scarlet fever has a genetic tendency, which would explain why Drew, Mason, and Darcy have all had it and I thought it was pretty much an unheard of disease any more. Mason was released around 11am Monday morning with orders of bed rest and penicillin to fight off any infection that might want to start up around the procedure site. Thankfully Mason came out of this all OK with a couple of good stories to tell his family.

Paul's mom, on the other hand, isn't doing so well. They found a valve in her heart that isn't working properly so she is having surgery to fix it tomorrow. Paul will be heading back down to be with her too.

Here is Mason in the hospital with his somewhat concerned sisters. See those things on his chest? Well they were stuck on him for his procedure and I ripped the one off his tummy and one off his chest but after that he wouldn't let me anywhere near him. He was also deathly afraid of the band aid they wanted to put on his IV site. So we wrapped an ace type bandage over some gauze and called it good. Last night while he was sleeping I ripped the band aid off his leg at the procedure site and I also got the last remaining sticky thing off his chest. He cried for about 2 seconds and then went right back to sleep. I told him about it this morning and he just giggled, thankfully. I'm glad he doesn't hate me! Today he scored the new Pirates of the Caribbean Lego game for the XBOX, hoping that would keep him in one place. He has actually walked a bit and he says he isn't hurting. I don't want him to over do it but its hard to keep Mason down for long. They told us this shouldn't ever happen again so hopefully we are done with all the sickness and doctors and urgent cares, and emergency rooms for about 10 years or so!