Misadventures in Health

The Pleasant Family is generally a healthy crew, well, at least they were until last week. I can honestly say last week may have been one for the stress record books. It really began on Monday, although we didn't know that then.

My husband, Tony, works in an office. Apparently he went to fix something on another computer in that office and misjudged a chair, we'll call it. You know, like when you go to step down off a step and it's further away than you thought? It was that, just with an office chair. This created a sharp pain in his abdomen he told me when he got home that day. Luckily, the pain went away that evening. So, he wakes up the next day and says he's a little sore, but nothing else.

Fast forward to noon the next day. After complaining of a few painful spasms, he calls me at noon and says he's headed straight to the emergency room. The conversation went something like this:

Me: "Hello?"
Tony: "Hi, I'm on my way to the emergency room."
Me: "Ok, are you okay? Can you wait for me to drive you?"
Tony: "No, I've already left home I'll just meet you there."

So, I jet off from work to the emergency room a little more than slightly worried, because for my husband to go to the ER, it must really hurt. He told me it felt like it might be his appendix. To make what could be an even longer story short, they do bloodwork, a CT scan and determine that it's not his appendix (whew!), but it could be kidney stones. So we wait a little while longer and they determine it's not that either. The diagnosis works out to be a severe muscle strain, from, yep the chair incident! It's not funny (okay, it's maybe a little funny), but they gave him pain killers and naproxen for the muscle spasms causing the pain.

Now, many days later, this leads to heartburn. The poor guy now has consistent heartburn and stomach pain so he quits taking the meds and goes to our regular family doctor (because 48 hours of persistent heartburn is not normal!) who informs him that the naproxen is causing that and it'll be another 7-10 days before that lets up. Needless to say, he will have to suffer some more, poor guy.

But, that can't be the end of this little misadventure! Two days after this little incident I'm sitting at work and my daycare calls me to inform me that my son has neither eaten or made a wet diaper since he's been there (he was dropped off at 8 am, it's now noon). So, I call his doctor and get no one. I leave work to go get him and the little guy can't even wake up or pick up his head. This has me scared to death, but luckily my husband shows up and we take the baby right to the doctor. No one is there (can they really send an entire office of pediatricians to lunch at the same time? Apparently they can!). We procede to the ER for the SECOND time this week. By this time Tyler is awake, but still groggy. They give him chest xrays, which he did not like, and an upper respiratory virus test, which he really didn't like.

All tests come back negative and it turns out he just has a chest virus. The grogginess was caused by dehydration from not wanting to eat. The worry is less, but the poor guy now undergoes saline nebulizer treatments and a whole lot of nose sucking to help relieve the congestion. He should return to normal in a few weeks. I also had nebulizer treatments when I was little and boy, have those machines come a long way! Ours looks like a little puppy now. When I was little, it was a big, scary box with a handle!

Anyway, that's the end of this misadventure, let's just hope we don't have to have anymore like it in the near (or far) future!