Patrick of Citium

Patrick is stoic.

Not when I am ruining his life by forcing him to stop building whatever he is building in order to go to school - you know, like he has done every single weekday since September and yet every day: unhappy surprise! - but when it comes to sheer physical discomfort he puts up with a lot before he says anything. That is my disclaimer.

Last Thursday Patrick and I were... huh. I think we were actually rolling around on the floor for some reason. Gosh we're playful. But as we rolled I noticed that he had a big old lump on the side of his neck, just under the ear. I'm not a rookie. I've played ohmygodnecklump before so I am able to recognize a swollen lymph when I see one. I said, yikes, Patrick, your neck. And he said, oh yeah, it's been like that for about two days. So I asked if his throat hurt (no) or his head hurt (no.) I took his temperature (99.nothing) and I checked his entire scalp for ticks. We have removed quite a few ticks from Patrick this season (some deer, some not) and there was a scab from one above the ear that was just above the lump. I concluded that his body had reacted to the two week old tick bite and the lymph was swollen in consequence. No big deal but I decided to take him to the doctor in the morning just to be on the safe side. I was about to try to analogize the lump for you but I just remembered I took a picture. See? Lumpy.

Our actual (beloved. oh how I belove him) pediatrician was not there on Friday so I had choice between New Partner Who Has Yet to Build Her Practice and Very Very Old Partner Who No One Wants to See Because He is Cranky. I went with the Newbie. I liked her. She checked Patrick out, went over his head looking for ticks, asked whether the lump hurts ("Well," Patrick replied carefully, "it hurts when my mom presses on it and I am not sure what you are going to do yet. So maybe") and then agreed with my initial assessment: his body was just dealing with some small scalp wound. I took Patrick to school.

Saturday, Sunday... Patrick was fine. A little warm at times but fine. I kept checking his lump and it seemed to be staying the same. Then on Monday night I woke up to the sound of sobbing. I am not the sharpest zester in the drawer at 4 am so I stumbled around upstairs trying to figure out who was crying and where they were. I finally located Patrick in the bathroom, moaning about how much it hurt to swallow. I felt his head, registered a moderate but not crazy fever on my maternal palm thermometer, gave him Motrin and took him to our bed. I tucked him in between Steve and me; waking Steve up to let him know Patrick was there, so be vigilant.

"Yarb," said Steve.

When Patrick woke up the next morning I discovered that his original lump was now the size of Idaho and all the surrounding lymph nodes on his neck were swollen and hard as well. His entire jaw had swelled and you could feel the glands there like a string of pebbles. Meanwhile, the lymph nodes on the other side of his neck were starting to increase. He was pale and his eyes were glassy. Strangely, his temperature was still around 99. Bodies are weird.

I called the doctor's office and their first available appointment was at 12:15.

"OK," I said.

You know, as I am writing this I am asking myself what I was thinking. And I know - I was thinking Patrick had a crappy normal kid virus - but in retrospect I want to slap myself for being so cavalier. Remember when I said that the only thing I recall from Biology is that the lysosome is the suicide bag of the cell? Well that is not true. I also remember that the lymphatic system is the body's highway. To para-sing: if a bacterial infection can make it therrrrrrrrre, it can make it an-y-wheeerrre. I should have taken him to the ER at four in the morning; is what I should have done. 

Back to reality: I accepted the 12:15 appointment, made Patrick a bed on the couch, gave him icy cranberry juice and very thin oatmeal. I let him watch anything he desired on Tivo.

"Can I watch America's Next Top Model?" he croaked.

"Um, sure."

"Ha," he gasped. "No. Thanks. Your. Stupid. Show."

[Aside: Patrick has been taught by his school that "stupid" is a swear word. Verboten. Not Done. Which is fine with us because calling someone stupid is very unkind. However, I think basic critical reasoning allows for a sliding scale of verbal assessment when it comes to things like Bravo TV programming so I gave Patrick permission to say that reality modeling shows are indeed stupid. It is a word he is allowed to use only at home so he does it at every possible opportunity.

Speaking of which, when I was in kindergarten I did something quite naughty. Stop me if I have told you this before. I told Kathy of the red rubber boots - awful girl; never liked her - that I knew how to write the mother of all swear words.

She said, "Show me."

I said, "OK but you have to promise not to tell. Cross your heart, hope to die, stick a needle in your eye. But," I added reasonably, "you don't really have to put a needle in your eye. Just your hand or something."              

"OK," she said.

So I did. I wrote F-U-C-K (I have an older brother, what can I say) and with a shocking lack of judgment I did so on the wall. In crayon.

Kathy of the boots promptly took a straight pin (where did she even get such a thing in the classroom? this part cannot be true and yet I remember it all so clearly) and put it painlessly through the very top layer of skin. Then she ran to the teacher and told on me. Snert.

Patrick got in trouble at the very beginning of the school year and he was devastated. Punished. At school. Oh the humanity. To cheer him up I told him the story of the writing on the wall, fudging the details a bit. It became more of a morality tale. I, too, was royally punished but I bounced back better and more law-abiding than ever.

"What was the bad word?" Patrick asked since I had glossed over that part. "Was it..." he lowered his voice, "stupid?"

"YES," I said. "YES it was. I wrote the word 'stupid' and I am very ashamed of that fact."]

Where was I? Oh. So Patrick began to watch a show about dinosaurs and then he just started to cry because he felt so terrible. Steve and I kinda freaked. The kid looked terrible. I grabbed him and a book and a blanket and threw him into the car. We went as a walk-in (technically a carry-in) to our pediatrician's office. While we waited Patrick just curled up on my lap with his head on my chest and groaned.

This time we saw Very Old Doctor Cranky.

I think in the past my problem with Dr V. O. Cranky has been that he has never taken my superspecial snowflake's symptoms as seriously as I have. I guess you see nine hundred million ear infections and the nine hundred million and first fails to inspire either pity or terror. This was not the case on Tuesday. It was obvious that he was actually concerned about Patrick and this fact made me triply/quadruply/infinitesimally more concerned. He did a strep test which came back negative, so he ordered blood work. Patrick sat on my lap and wept. 

White blood cell count came back high. They repeated the strep. Found an odd strain. Ordered two shots of antibiotic, one for each leg. Thought about sending him to Childrens. Left to consult with others. Kept us in the office to observe for an hour. Tried to decide if he had developed an abscess in the lymph. Decided not but dourly noted that it was still possible; maybe probable. Eventually put him on clindamycin, which is a hardcore antibiotic they use to treat broad spectrum infections. Said Patrick needed to return to the office the following day and if we had not seen significant improvement they would hospitalize him.

Scared the beejeezums out of me.

It's odd how everything can change in a moment. Not Patrick's condition - that had been getting gradually worse - but my interpretation of everything leading up to the visit changed in a split-second. Why on earth hadn't I taken him to the ER that morning? I remember this feeling from when a very small Caroline got hospitalized with a respiratory infection. It had seemed so harmless: oh the baby has a runny nose; oh the baby is a little stuffed up; she has a little cough... then fifteen people are running around struggling to get oxygen into her as the EMTs bundled her into their ambulance as gently as Tutankhamen's very last treasure.    

By the time the doctor saw Patrick his entire face was swollen and one half of his neck looked corrugated and reptilian. He was a terrible color and he couldn't stop crying. In retrospect I should have asked for a strep test on Friday. I should have taken him to the hospital when he said it hurt to swallow. It seems so horribly unfair that children are at the mercy of their parents - of this parent at any rate - when my ability to distinguish between sick and SICK is apparently nonexistent. I feel guilty.

But we were lucky. The infection responded quickly to the antibiotics. He finally developed a fever that night but by morning he felt terrific. He bounced into the doctor's office and the nurse who we had seen the day before said, "Wow, you look like a different kid."

"Guess those shots worked," said Patrick.

Our regular pediatrician said, "Old Doc Cranky doesn't scare easily. You must have looked pretty rough yesterday."    

"I did," said Patrick. "And then I got two shots and I couldn't even walk*."

"How is the medicine going? I know it tastes pretty bad."

"Yes," Patrick agreed. "And it... lingers? But," he shrugged "you have to do what you have to do, you know?"

Like I said, Patrick is stoic.

*Carrying 49 pounds of weepy Patrick out of the doctor's office through the parking lot and then around Walgreens to get his prescription filled with a pause mid aisle for chocolate-pudding-as-lactobacillus-delivery-system - the package for which I then had to clutch between my teeth - ranks as my own personal mother lifts volkwagen off child moment. I thought my arms were going to fall off. And, unlike Patrick, I whined about it afterwards. 

Comments

[Kelli]

So very glad Patrick's doing better. I have a stoic child as well. His special trick during ear infections as a toddler was to be happy as a lark, have no fever, but yellow goo running out of his ear. It's SO hard to know when they're SICK sick, and my husband is no help and teases me constantly for being over-protective. I'm generally in the 'give it 24 hours' group, but for things that linger, I'm all about taking them in. I'd rather blow $25 over nothing than miss SOMETHING.

[MindyMax]

The Dr. Cranky Pants are always great when they need to be. We had an 'issue' with our ped practice's Dr. Cranky and we were so upset by it, we made an appointment with our regular pediatrician to talk to him about it...about how Dr. Cranky's bedside manner with our son was really hard to witness. He said 'I know he's a little rough around the edges sometimes, but if my child were seriously ill, he'd be the first Dr. I'd take them to.' After that, his crankiness seemed 'earned' and we got along famously from then on.

Glad Patrick's on the mend. Strep is nasty stuff. I had scarlet fever at 19 because my 'strep' was never more than 99.something and a slightly sore throat...until I woke up more sick than I had ever been in my life (or have been since). My mom never took my 99.something 'fevers' lightly from then on.

[Kristi]

I googled Citium, thanks :) I'm so happy he's doing better, don't beat yourself up too bad! It's part of our job, I know.

[Pork with Bones]

Oh, my goodness. That's very much what Acorn's neck looked like a few weeks ago when he had strep. (The time before that he just spiked a terribly high fever, refused to bend his neck in the manner of one who has meningitis, and broke out in the scarlet fever rash the day after our ER visit. During which visit the doctors utterly failed to do a strep test and told me to wait a few days to "see if he got better" before starting the just-in-case antibiotics they prescribed. I'm not bitter.)

So, for the record, Patrick is not the only stoic kindergartner out there; and the ER might or might not have been better help than waiting for Dr. Cranky turned out to be.

[Mrs. CPA]

We have had to use the clindamycin when my son had MRSA - twice - three times a day for 10 days. They told us to sprinkle it in chocolate syrup to give it to him. I tried it and it was the nastiest thing I had ever tasted. And yes, it coats your mouth and stays there for hours. And that was just a finger tip taste. So I had to teach a 3 year old how to swallow a pill. I figured the 3 seconds of gagging was way better than the hours of disgusting taste.

We thought "Oh a little spot on his butt" and ended up in the hospital for 5 days when it got to the point where he couldn't even stand up.

Then my 3 month old was sick and I took her to the emergency room on Christmas day, and spend a few days there again (in the same room actually) with RSV induced pneumonia.

I'm pretty laid back about kids and their various illnesses, but we are going to see a specialist for Maddie since she has had pneumonia 3 times in 4 months.

I hope the medicine knocks it out and he gets back to his normal, non lumpy self soon!

[tgsdmom]

This is for Patrick:
I am so sorry you had to go through all the suffering. I am so happy you are now getting well and feeling better. I am so proud of your behavior: enduring the pain so well, keeping your sense of humor all the time and accepting the unavoidable. Take care.

This is for Julia:
Sorry you had such a terrible experience. Happy it had a happy ending. (Hopefully it is now over.) Don't feel too guilty. You are even less of an expert than nice newbie doc, and she did not suspect an emergency nor did she think to do a strep test. Illness can advance very rapidly. Luckily you were fast enough to secure the happy ending. Also, now you are a bit more experienced...

Lots of love

[Sheridan]

I'm really sorry for laughing in the middle of your Patrick story, but that swear word story was hilarious!

Now that I have wiped the smile off my face, I am also sorry about poor Patrick. My husband has a high pain threshold (who would have thought it existed in males?) and experience has taught me that if he says he feels a little unwell, he belongs in hospital.

I'm still not sure if our kids have inherited it or not, but it is scary.

Hope he is on the mend.

And stop being so hard on yourself!

[Ooompa Lympha]

Wow, his neck looks terrible in that photo.

But my, that boy has a cute little nose.

[Leah]

I'd have done the same thing. Kids are always sick - I certainly wouldn't run to the ER for what seemed like a normal sick. You're a great Mom. Don't worry.

[shriekhouse]

First: I am so glad Patrick is ok!

Second: My WORD but you are the mistress of suspense! I was ready to put a needle through MY eye speeding through the red shoe girl bit, and weeping - actual tears! - through the enlargening necklump bits.

Third: I will always love our ped office's Dr. Cranky for sending my kid to the ER with what I just thought was a tummy ache but turned out to be far worse.

* So glad you didn't have to sprint through Walgreens with 49 pounds of weeping Patrick.... AND towing the twinkles!

[Kristin]

How scary. I had a similar situation when my oldest was about 2 and it was terrifying.

BTW, glad the clindamycin worked for Patrick. I am horribly allergic to it.

[Aurelia]

Oy, I hate emergencies and scary things like that. I swear I spend more time in the ER and the ped's office than I care to admit, and I feel such total and complete sympathy for any mom who has to do this.

Just feel relieved that he will not have very many more illnesses like this. As they get older, they seem to not get as many illnesses. Don't know why?

[Cee]

Oh, poor darling Patrick! But you know, I'm in my twenties and I still get swollen lymphs and terrible infections. We have something in common. I would recommend plenty of flat Coke with ice and Dr. Quinn episodes, but I think Patrick is like twenty years younger than me. Still!

[bethany actually]

Oh my goodness, I am SO glad Patrick is all better!

And I laughed at your fudging of your story, telling Patrick you wrote STUPID.

I have my own kindergarten story about the F-Bomb, actually. It's not as funny as yours, but would you like me to share anyway? All righty then.

When I was a wee child walking home from kindergarten one day, I noticed the word "FUCK" etched into the concrete sidewalk outside my school. I was a well-read kindergartner, but I didn't recall ever coming across that word. So I went home and asked my mom, "What does 'fuck' mean?" My mom calmly told me that it was a very bad word, and I shouldn't say it to anyone EVER, and that she would tell me what it meant when I was older. Being a compliant child, I followed her directions to the letter; and being a helpful child I pointed the word in the sidewalk out to several friends the next day and told them it was a VERY BAD WORD and they should NEVER say it. I sometimes wonder how many of those kids got in trouble for cussing that night.

[Kim Ichikawa]

Wow! I'm so glad he is feeling better!!!

[Melissia]

I am so glad that Patrick is feeling better. My stoic child complained of a stomach ache one morning, so I suggested he eat breakfast. Before I could check to see if he felt better he had biked himself to school. ( He was a middle schooler, age 11, and we lived about 2 blocks away.) So I called the school nurse to check on him, and by lunchtime he was in the OR having his appendix removed! He stayed 12 hours in the hospital and came home, returned to school in 3 days and is the only person I know to have a laproscopic appy.

[Heather]

So sorry Patrick was so sick. Our Phoebe gets like that when she's sick. She downplays every symptom and doesn't get a fever right away or at all. We also try to avoid the ER though. It always seems like it should be reserved for the most dire of issues, or a weekend ear infection, LOL!

[Cookie]

I'm so sorry to hear that Patrick is sick, but glad that antibiotics quickly acted to make him feel better. It's so hard make that judgment call with children. They're not good about telling you what's wrong, and sometimes they're too little to be able to do so.

I finally took my baby (okay 14 month old) to the doctor on Monday because he'd had a cold for two weeks and was really cranky and pulling at his ear only to discover he had an ear infection. Enter antibiotics and he's doing much better. Parenting is a learning experience and there are always judgment calls. The important part is that you did get him to the doctor and he got the help he needed and he is almost as good as new now.

[BrooklynGirl]

Holy crap.

Glad that Patrick is on the mend and hope you arms are feeling better.

[Korinna]

Poor buddy--I'm glad he's peppier and less lumpy.

And you?--with the lifting? Consider that your weight training for the next 2.5 years.

[Discopitbull]

My youngest is the opposite of stoic, which has lead to my being a little more than critical about every booboo and ouchy. When he came to me about a swelling white lump in his jaw next to a baby tooth I told him it was just his new tooth trying to get in past his stubborn old one (in my defense he had had to have 4 baby teeth prised from his jaw earlier to let the new shark teeth that were lined up behind them in). Turns out it was a horrid pus filled abcess, excruciatingly painful and potentially dangerous. I felt horrible. Kids really are at the mercy of their parents. :(

[Sara]

That sounds incredibly scary. I'm so glad that Patrick is on the mend, and that you managed to lift your light and floppy Volkswagen when the time came for you to do so.

[Lala]

I remember when Jackson presented with Appendicitis in the middle of the night. He threw up and complained of pain but I sent him back to bed. I let him stay home from school the next day and went off to work. He called me at work around noon and I sent him over to the neighbors so she could poke palpate him in the right place but his lack of social skills caused confusion and I never got a call from the neighbor(as I had asked) and didn't rush home until 3 p.m. when he finally answered the phone and admitted he was in pain. So a full 12 hours elapsed before I took him in and he didn't have surgery until 2 a.m.

[Lisa]

My youngest child is quite often the "beneficiary" of Clindamycin, as he is allergic to all the -cillins. The first time he got it, for a tooth abscess, the pharmacist said, "You know, we might ought to mix this with a flavor. It's pretty bad." "How bad could it be," I mused, "He's 11, he can choke it down."

Holy shit. It smells like a dirty diaper left out in the sun for three days, then coated in vomit. They mixed it with "grape," which Alex assured me did NOT help (the vomit had grape juice in it, I guess).

The Clindamycin Factory doesn't have good tasters, is what I'm thinking.

[Tine]

It's so hard to know what's wrong sometimes. Don't beat yourself up. But I know exactly how you feel, because I've been there plenty of times myself. The thing that always kills me is the pity I feel for my poor kid, who is reliant on me to be smarter than I (apparently) am.

((hug))

[sheilah]

Yes. I had to Google Citium.

(glad Patrick is feeling better)

[elsimom]

You know - it's just impossible to know sometimes - we've had stomach aches that had kids writhing in pain, which turned out to be a "very bad virus" that is going around (I was SURE it was an appendix).

We've had a baby with what we thought was croup (at 4 in the morning, alternating between the steamy bathroom and the cold MN night - talked to the on-call pediatrician TWICE - I am forever grateful that she was there to talk to at that time, and sounded wide awake and fully cognizant) that turned out to be pneumonia.

We've had a baby spike a fever, and deteriorate before our very eyes as we wait for various tests to come back in the doctor's office - bacteremia (blood infection) followed just hours later by a perfectly happy kid once the penicillin shot went to work.

We also had what we thought was a urinary tract infection, and it turned out to be Type I Diabetes . . . . and we had talked to a pediatric on-call nurse the night before (i.e. expert!!) and described the symptoms (in retrospect - classic diabetes symptoms) and the nurse didn't even mention the possibility of diabetes, or grave concern. (Believe me - I was pretty damn skittish about every little thing after that one! Still am, sort of . . . )

The bottom line is - you do what you think is right, based on the child's apparent condition at that time - and you rely on the experts to tell you what to do when the time comes. And then, over time, you learn about that kid, and how they respond to illness, and you know more for the next time.

So glad Patrick is feeling better (nasty medecine, aside)!

[Pam L]

See, it's been so long since I had swollen glands, often ,eventually ended up with a tonsillectomy and then went into Rheumatic fever, and since my kids never had any of these problems, if something like you described in Patrick showed up in one of my kids , I wouldn't have a clue what it was or what to think or do at first. My Paul is such a hypochondriac that I probably wouldn't believe him anyway if he told me he thought he had something serious because it has never, not once ever turned out to be anything. "No, I do not think your leg that hurts is broken after you walked home all the way from Mason's house on it." It wasn't, they just were always crashing into things especially when on Mason's trampoline. Yes, we could respond sooner if we had total medical insight, but the important thing was you were trying to do the right thing and Patrick is fine now.

[llcsis]

(((hugs))) to Patrick and for you for agony of "why didn't I..." mother anxiety.

I had Scarlet Fever 5 times in grade school. Yes, really. The first few times the doctor said "No, it can't possibly be that again..." after that I was just regarded as some sort of medical anomaly.

Had strep a couple times as an adult. I know its strep when it starts fast and refuses to be ignored (MUST have relief, NOW) and it becomes a choice between breathing or eating. Poor Patrick.

[llcsis]

Oops read again, I think I misunderstood - not strep - you don't really know what kind of virus - Still misery abounds and my sympathies remain.

[Kathleen]

I think you must go to my ped. It sounds the same, anyway. I kind of like Dr. Cranky, although he's not my regular doc.

[victoria]

??? I don't get it. As son as you saw a lump, you did take him to the doctor, who agreed that it was a reaction to a scalp wound/tick bite. Then he was fine for days. Then when he wasn't fine anymore, you took him back to the doctor. I don't understand why you're harshing on yourself. But then, I don't have any kids. I don't know what it's like to have a little person depend on me for life and death decisions.

[Kristin]

You know, more and more I think there ought to be some sort of standard mini-manual given to parents: call doctor immediately if you see X, Y, Z. And I don't mean the usual basic ones you see in a lot of good childcare/parenting books. The problem is, we know the basics (fever? check. can't keep fluids down? double extra check. etc.). We need a manual with things like "random bump on side of neck." I have a non-complainer 3-year old, and I feel fortunate to have a pedi's office that takes me seriously when I say, "He has a history of recurrent ear infections, and he's just not acting like himself." But we still missed a couple. And (cough, shuffle) we missed the pneumonia.

Then again, I missed pneumonia once when I had it, too. High tolerance is NOT always a good thing. Like one of the commenters said, I've come to realize that when I think, "Gee, maybe I should see a doctor," I'm probably a couple of days past when I should have seen a doctor. When I think, "Gee, it hurts a little, but whatever, I didn't think much of it" the doctor is thinking, "Here, let me write you something for that pain." So I've learned that I need to keep my antennae up sooner than I might otherwise -- but I'm better at doing it for my child than for myself, because I know he needs me to do it FOR him.

And that, my friends, is my scary thought for the day. I'm going to go find some chocolate, and eat it under my desk.

Glad to hear Patrick is on the mend, and please don't beat yourself up. You got him the care he needed.

Hang in there --

[Becky]

My eldest is stoic too.

Unless, of course, thar be a paper cut. Then he moans about the house histrionically, icing the invisible cut, carefully using every bandaid in the box to sop up the invisible blood flow, and generally driving me batty (ier).

He only stops after I threaten to cut off his finger to stop the pain.

[Bethany]

It is so, so hard to tell. Sometimes there is such a thin line between sick and SICK. Sometimes the amount of time it takes to go from sick to SICK is very short indeed, as well. Glad to hear he's doing so much better! You did exactly what Patrick needed and you're a wonderful Mom! Your kiddos are very lucky indeed to have you as their mother :)

[JennG]

Ha, I used to think my parents had been negligent when they would tell their stories of me "suddenly" coming down with horrendous things like, oh, pneumonia.

Then I had my son.

He does not complain or show symptoms until BOOM! he does.

You're a good mom. In all cases, you were seeking medical care - so you didn't freak, but you were on the ball. That's the only marker you need to worry about.

[liz s]

Don't kick yourself. We all have to make judgements on how sick our kids really are this time. I've missed scarlet fever and staph-and yes, I work in health care.

You are a great mom and I'm glad that he is OK.

[Bianca]

I'm glad he responded so quickly to the antibiotics. I too would have felt awful for not taking my kiddo in earlier, but hindsight, 20-20, etc.

Good for you for upping his pro-biotics. Clindamyocin is no joke. I pour the contents of the probiotics capsules directly into milk and have my daughter drink it that way too (if he gets tired of the pudding).

[Jesse]

Kids are sort of backwards in that the amount of discomfort they feel is usually in direct adverse proportion to how much they are whining about it. I once developed acute appendicitis at the age of 10. The first night I slept on the floor of the bathroom because I kept getting sick. The second day I couldn't even keep down water or walk upright. My dad, who had actually just had appendicitis 9 months previously, told me to "buck up" because it didn't seem like I was really sick enough to merit staying in bed. By the THIRD day, I couldn't get out of bed and sent my little brother to ask my parents to take me to the hospital. This shocked them to their senses and they immediately took me to the ER where, after 12 hours of tests and waiting with a temperature of almost 105, I was diagnosed as having a ruptured appendix, sent off for emergency surgery and spent the next two weeks in the hospital recovering. A few hours longer and I would have died. My dad felt so guilt-stricken that he actually bought me a brand new bike and had it waiting in my bedroom when I finally came home from the hospital. To this day, he still winces when the story is told.

[Christiana]

Glad Patrick is feeling better. I totally get that you don't want to jump to assume the worst. I resist going to ER/urgent care even the doctor for myself. And I'm constantly appologizing to my pediatrician when I bring my daughter in for the "this could be bad, but it also could be a cold..." visits. I get why you don't push. I still think you are doing a great job.

[Tine]

Jesse: eeeek!

[Sarah]

Wow. What a sickness. Glad you made it through. You can always look back and see what might have been better, but it only helps the next kid :)

Hope Patrick is feeling better.

And my older daughter isn't stoic about pain. If she stubs her toe, cover your ears. But when she's been actually ill...then she doesn't mention a thing. But then again, I am sort of the same way.

[SarahB]

So glad Patrick is feeling better! You did exactly what you should have done, he was sick, you took him in the the dr. It is so hard to tell with these little ones, sometimes SICK looks just like sick. My little guy has had the double shot of antibiotic (Rocefen, I think) on 2 occasions and it helped him tremendously.

[Holly W.]

I have a kid like that, too. Last Monday, he told me his stomach hurt and refused to walk. He'd just ask me to carry him and tell me very matter-of-factly that he was unable to ambulate due to the fact that his stomach hurt. Finally around two that afternoon I called the pediatrician even though he had no other symptoms and wasn't even crying. Her advice was to take him to the ER and guess what??? APPENDICITIS!!!! And he didn't cry, not once, until after the surgery was over. To top it off, they had to do it the old fashioned way instead of laparoscopically so he had major abdominal surgery to boot. Less than four days later and I was screaming at him to please be careful and still and quiet before he hurts himself.
Huh. Kids.

[Brigid Keely]

Aww, poor Patrick.

[Kristin]

I agree with a previous commenter--you are a master (mistress?) of suspense. I was on the edge of my seat reading this. I'm glad it turned out ok, but how terribly scary for all of you.

[Emily]

I have noticed that my son's sicknesses always start on Friday evening... and progress... and by Saturday afternoon they are awful. They never start on a Monday when the doctors offices are open!
He had an ear infection for weeks, and we had no indication. The doctor called the infection "impressive." Yes - I felt horrible.... but there was no way to tell, it just seemed like a regular cold!

[Kathleen]

Sorry about the scare, I'm glad that everything is ok now.

I just wanted to tell you that I was reading the you-in-kindergarten aside really quickly to find out what was wrong with Patrick and somehow misinterpreted it as something you had done recently. Like in your role helping out in Patrick's classroom, with one of your less favorite of his classmates. I mean, by the time I got to the end of it I realized my mistake, but in the seconds beforehand the imagery of now-you telling some snarky little kid you knew how to write the f-word was pretty f-ing hilarious.

[juliag]

My guy is a pain denial sort. I have found that his code word for pain is "I'm cold". It's taken me awhile to realize this means that he hurts somewhere but just doesn't want to admit it. The denial is pretty sad actually. He's only two and won't take comfort. As an example...the other day at the park he took a terrible tumble and had tears in his eyes, but when another mom rushed to him and asked if he was OK he busted out with "NEVER BETTER!" through his teary eyes.

[Alexicographer]

Chiming in with Kristen, I "missed" a UTI when I had one despite having had them before ... and due to a stupid miscommunication with my doctor's office, they "missed" (letting me know I had it) too, leading to a kidney infection, fever of 103, and several days in bed at my parents' home (after I was an adult and had my own place). All of which is a long way of saying that things that are obvious in retrospect are often far from it, before that.

Also, any story that involves a child and ends well without involving an ER visit is probably better than ditto with an ER visit, so I say you did the right thing.

Glad he is doing better, poor kid.