Thursday, March 08, 2007

WHAT a day!

The Lord surely blessed me with enough energy to get it through it though. It didn't stop until just now, when I put the kids to bed and washed up. I wanted to share our stressful day before passing out on the couch :)

This morning we went pretty early to visit Poppa (my Grandpa) in the hospital. He's been very weak and is being weaned off some seizure meds and needs to be in the hospital while doing this.

Wait, I have to back up.

Last night, Ethan woke up at 10pm, crying, saying that his head hurt. This is something he's never ever complained about. Concerned, but not really sure what to do, we gave him some ibuprofen and put him back down. He woke a couple times after that, but didn't mention his head.

Ok, so back to my original starting point. We're driving on the trestle and Ethan starts clutching his head and saying, "owie, owie, owie", "hurt, hurt hurt". This continues for a few minutes. Then peace, then he starts saying that his neck hurts too.

My mind really starts whirring and I immediately think meningitis. But he has no fever, no other symptoms. I left a message on the pediatrician nurse line. We arrive at the hospital and see Poppa and Grammy (which was so great, despite the rather dour surroundings) and I get a call from the nurse advising that we wait and see. If he starts vomiting, has a fever or the headache doesn't go away with meds that we should bring him in ASAP. At this point, I'm thinking, "Ok, great... they aren't worried, I'm not going to get overly worried".

We head home and Ethan conks out (unusual, especially at the early hour). I get him home and lay him on the couch and take his temp. Its 102.9. CRAP.

So I call the doctor, they want me there ASAP. Out we go again. Ethan barely wakes up through all this and sleeps on the way to the doctor.

To make an already long story short, they checked him all out, had him move his head and neck various ways and he does NOT have meningitis. He appears to have some sort of viral thing and we should enforce the usual treatments (water, rest, etc). You can imagine how relieved we were.

We got home around 1:30, I put the kids down for nap, then whipped up a pineapple upside down cake for Jason, got dinner started (Cincinnati Chili) and did dishes. At 3:30, my Mom came to watch the kids while I went out and did errands (library = 12 books. w00t!) since I canceled my therapy before I knew Ethan was ok.

Mom and Jen stayed through dinner (bless them) and made our evening run much smoother. Traffic was horrendous today and it took J two hours to get home.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is spooky. A friend of mine and her family came over Wed and her husband made Cincinatti Chilli which I had never heard of until then. :)

Anonymous said...

Psst. That was Mrs. Hoppes that posted the above. ;)

Kim (Mrs. Hoppes)

PS: Glad everything is ok.