That's my 17 year old, highly independent son that is never sick. In fact in four years of high school he has maybe missed 3 days total for not feeling well. So when he woke me up at 2:00 this morning saying his stomach was killing him and falling to the ground writhing in pain, I took him seriously. I asked if he was nauseous but he said no it just really hurt like he was being stabbed. I briefly looked online to see if there were any nearby Urgent Care centers that were open 24hrs, but there weren't. So off we headed to the Emergency Room. They were under construction so they had valet parking, which in the freezing weather I was happy to oblige.
They got him checked in quickly as we were the only ones there. Once he was admitted the doctor came in to check him out. She asked a few questions, pushed all around on his abdomen and then said he'd most likely be losing his appendix. That was my fear, and the only reason I'd brought him in. Flu's I can get through, organ failures not so much. So they hooked him up to an IV, got him doped up on morphine and took him for a CT.
After the CT scan, we had to wait a bit for the results. When they came back, it was good news. His appendix looked healthy, but the lymph nodes surrounding it were inflamed. She said it could be several things; the flu coming on, a viral infection or early appendicitis. She gave us the option to stay put and have him observed for 8 hours or send him home and have me observe him. I opted to head home.
By then his pain was coming back so before disconnecting him, they shot him up with another dose of morphine and waited for the pain to recede. We got home just as the girls were ready to go to school. I got in another hour or two of sleep and Stephen slept for several hours.
I woke him up and fed him his bland diet foods that he was told he could only eat for today. He said he felt a lot better at that point. It still hurt, but nothing like before. So fortunately the only bad thing to come of this was another missed day of school. He'd missed Friday because he was up at Santa Clara University on a recruiting trip. So he's a bit stressed about what he's missed in school, but we're all very relieved not to have to go through a surgery.
It's such an awful thing to watch your kids in pain. Especially when they are never in pain and there isn't anything you can do to make that pain go away.
No comments:
Post a Comment