The Rest of the Story

A few weeks ago, my eldest child asked why I was only blogging about the little two.  If this was her way of making the blog, I can think of much easier ways to go about it.

On Sunday afternoon, The Teen told me her right side was hurting.  I really didn't think too much about it.  She wasn't in a lot of pain, but she did have a kidney stone when she was ten, so I don't completely discount her aches and pains. 

She told me it was still hurting each day, but she never really complained, and she didn't try to stay home from school. 

Wednesday morning, she got up to get ready for school, then came to me, holding her side and sort of hunched over.  She said it hurt too bad for her to get ready.  I sent her back to bed. 

At that point, I decided she needed to be checked out, so I got her in to see our favorite pediatrician.  Dr. McCutie checked her out.  He pressed on her abdomen, moved her legs around and made her hop up and down.  Then he said we needed to take her to the ER because "that's where the surgeons are".  He said because of the location of the sensitivity, he couldn't rule out appendicitis.

He also said not to let her eat anything just in case she needed surgery later.  Which meant I didn't eat anything because I thought eating in front of her would be sort of mean.  I did stop at "cheeseburger's house" aka Wendy's to get The Boy a cheeseburger.  He sat in his car seat munching away and said, "My cheeseburger is dummy (yummy).  Is your cheeseburger dummy?"  Brat!

I made arrangements for the other three kids, went home, packed up enough of their stuff for an overnight stay at Nana's if need be, and took The Teen to the ER. 

We only waited in the waiting room for about three minutes.  Then we sat in the exam room for an hour waiting for a doctor.  When the doctor finally came in, she pressed on The Teen's abdomen, asked a few questions, and said she needed a CT scan and then possibly an ultrasound.

And we waited.

After another hour, we were taken for the CT which is when I snapped the picture from yesterday's post. 

And we waited.

After another hour and a half or so, the doctor came in to tell us that the CT scan showed that her appendix was fine, but her right ovary was swollen.  They needed to insert a catheter so they could fill her bladder with water, and she needed an ultrasound to see if she had an ovarian cyst (no big deal) or if her ovary was twisted (BIG deal).

And we waited.

The nurse came in to insert the catheter.  After that, I thought I might need an x-ray of my hand.  I literally had finger prints on my hand from all the squeezing.  Not that I blame her.

And we waited.

Once we were finally taken for the ultrasound, I watched as her bladder (or actually the balloon on the catheter) filled with water.  I thought it was cool.  The Teen?  Not so much.

The ultrasound tech was very thorough.  She spent almost an hour measuring and recording sounds.  She told me that while she wasn't supposed to tell me anything, she could tell me that there was good blood flow.  That was such a relief!  As she was finishing up, she said she wondered if there had been a cyst that had already ruptured.  I took that to mean she didn't see a cyst.  We were taken back to our room in the ER.

And we waited.

The picture she doesn't know I took and may kill me for!

Finally, the doctor came back in and told us that while her right ovary did measure bigger than her left, they couldn't find anything wrong.  She said we'll never really know what caused the pain.  It's possible that it was just pain from ovulating.  We were sent home with orders to give her Motrin every six hours, push fluids and make her rest.

By the time we left, we had been in the ER for 7 hours, 15 minutes.  We were exhausted and starving.  Neither of us had eaten anything all day.  We ordered pizza when we got home, and I'm surprised we didn't attack the poor pizza dude when he showed up at the door.

The next time she wants to make it on the blog, maybe she'll just offer herself up for a photo shoot!