Tell me it isn’t so….

I am writing this from Max’s bedside as he sleeps…..in the hospital! Max started to complain of pain roughly around the site of his recent biopsy yesterday morning and it progressed from there throughout the day. By the time I got home from work he was crouched over hoppling like a ninety year old man. All he was missing was the cane!

Because Max never, ever complains that something hurts we knew we had to do something. And what could that something be? What else but the ER! We arrived at our local ER around 7pm, got blood work, an ultrasound and a CT Scan done but didn’t get into a room until midnight! We didn’t see a doctor for nearly another hour. Michele is completely disappointed in me claiming that my ER times are way off and I may be on the cusp of losing my “Queen of the ER” sash.

Extremely long story short -- other than an ultrasound tech asking us about Max’s liver “masses “while she was waving her magic wand over this organ sending me into a hysterical recitation of the Rosary praying that she was just seeing shadows and not discovering some new horrible, horrible finding -- all his test results came back as “normal”. Obviously this is fabulous but it still didn’t answer the original question as to why Max couldn’t walk upright or have his belly touched without significant discomfort. So because I had the presence of mind to call Max’s local GI doc when we got to the ER (thank God she has never changed her cell number in the last nine years) the attending doctor called her to consult on our next steps. Unfortunately those steps led us straight to a “direct admit” at a nearby Children’s Hospital and Max being placed on the dreaded “NPO” list, it was like a double whammy in his world – no home, no food.

An evening in the ER, any ER, is always grueling but I can truthfully say last night was the worst. Max didn’t want anyone to touch him, we fought him on blood work, on an IV, and on just about everything else. Because this hospital wasn’t a pediatric facility the staff just didn’t know how to handle Max. Heck we can’t really blame them because we were also at a loss having never seen Max behave so rebelliously about his care. The hardest part came when he cried out at the top of his lungs as if pleading with the heavens, “I JUST WANT A NORMAL LIFE!” How do you handle that?

So in less than three weeks we have had the great pleasure of hitting three hospitals, perhaps we can start the Zagat’s guide to medical facilities…..all I know is that we haven’t had such a crappy run of “luck” (term used very loosely) in an extremely long time and we need it to end pronto!

To close, a few words of wisdom from Max as we motored from Hospital #1 to Hospital #2:

- “Mom, when we get to the new hospital please don’t call me ‘stink’ like you always do.”
- “OK Max what do you want me to call you?”
- “Snoop Dog works…”