the fun never ends

I had a little post planned that I was going to title 'reprise' because last Thursday, I picked up my twin grandgirls and brought them out to the country house for a few days while their brother had surgery and recuperated.

My grandson was at an untended skate park a week ago last Thursday where some kid had his 4 year old brother he was supposed to be watching, I guess, who he wasn't watching and the kid ran out in front of Mikey who was coming down one of the tall slopes. It was a near miss and the only reason he didn't plow into the kid was because he reacted quickly and fell badly, breaking his elbow.

So last Friday, he had surgery to pin the broken off tip of his elbow back onto the rest of the bone.

It was quick, in surgery for only about 30 minutes and he was home the same day and recovered enough to be picking on his youngest sister relentlessly.

In the meantime, the visit with the girls was going well. I was working, or trying to work, on filling a mold. The girls made dream catchers and sorted through about 25 years of pictures that didn't make it into photo albums.

Friday evening Jade got a headache and went to bed early. She woke up early Saturday morning with stomach pain and started throwing up. Which she did all day. We were thinking it was just some sort of 24 hour thing except the vomiting never decreased in frequency. About 4PM, the pain shifted and increased in intensity to a sharp stabbing pain in her lower right abdomen.

No, no, no.

I consulted the All Knowing Oracle hoping to dispel my gut feeling that it was appendicitis. The pain and the nausea I knew but other symptoms were a low grade fever and inability to pass gas or constipation. She felt a little warm and a quick check with the thermometer confirmed a low grade fever and when questioned she said she had been unable to fart.

Great.

I called a friend of mine who was, before she retired, a surgical assistant to get her feel for it, hoping she would tell me I was being alarmist, but no, what she said was that she felt Jade needed to go to the ER and while it could be something else it was better to be over-cautious.

Since I'm not the parent and didn't have written parental consent for medical treatment and wouldn't take my worst enemy to the hospital here in Wharton for anything serious, I called my daughter who didn't want or need to hear this, as, like us, they are part of the uninsured in Texas. But Sarah is a strong and capable woman who faces things head on and after the initial shock of another possible surgery for one of her kids the day after she just went through that with her son, she gathered her wits and had a plan by the time I arrived with the girls.

When she and Jade got to the emergency room about 7:30, they put them in a room right away and it took the doctor all of 5 minutes to diagnose the worst. A cat scan confirmed it.

Since her husband was working second shift and wouldn't be home til late I spent the night and got the other kids fed and distracted while we waited for news.

I went up to the hospital the next morning to sit with Sarah while Jade was in surgery. In the pre-surgical conference with the doctor, he told her that Jade had 'acute appendicitis' but that it had not ruptured. Apparently it had been going bad for a few days as her white blood cell count was very high indicating that she had been fighting an infection.

After the surgery, which lasted about an hour, he came out and talked to us (with color pictures of Jade's insides). There had been a lot of pus inside and behind her uterus but he got it all cleaned out, the appendix removed, and they would be keeping her overnight at the very least.

So poor Jade has three small incisions with a drain tube. She's grumpy and in pain, had gone without food since Friday night and they finally gave her something to eat about 48 hours after her last meal, if you consider clear liquids and jello a meal.

Sarah says getting her to the bathroom and back may just kill them both.