Started Bad, Ended Good

At just before 6 a.m. I woke up for a minute. Eric said, "Anita, I think we need to go to the emergency room." Ugh. Now we need to back up...

About a week ago I did my typical wife thing and suggested that Eric change deodorants because his deodorant was expensive and it only lasted him like 1.5 weeks! He, being the good husband, said that would be okay. We got him a good brand deodorant that was semi-solid. A few days later he started complaining that the deodorant was "too dry" and it was breaking him out. A day later he pointed out a big "ingrown hair" under his arm. Yesterday the little ingrown hair had turned into a big whelp of about 3 inches and it was pretty painful. By 6am this morning he had almost a 101 temperature, was in a lot of pain, and the whelp was about 5 inches long and 2 inches tall. Yep, time to head to the ER. When you have an immune-compromised person in your house you don't take things like that lightly.

My sister and her partner and daughter are here for the FIRST TIME visiting us for the whole weekend. We had a big zoo trip planned today. Instead she got to watch all 4 kids while I took Eric to the ER.

Thankfully, the ER wasn't filled with all the 4th of July accident victims yet and we got right in, got to see a host of docs (Eric always presents an interesting case). Bottom line: It was a very large abscess filled with what the believe was/is MYRSA. [That is the antibiotic resistant staph infection that was on the news so much about a year ago.]. The told us that they would drain the abscess and then do IV antibiotics, followed by a day of observation (because of Eric's complicating health issues). FUN! NOT!

It was interesting but a little gross to watch the doc cut into Eric's under arm with a scalpel, then take scissors and spread the tissues all around looking for the big pocket of infection. At one point he put his finger in there up to the second knuckle! He never did find a big pocket of infection, but they made the whole and tracks for the infection to seep into so that it can drain from here on out. Then they filled the whole with cotton packing.

The admitting physician came in and decided that Eric wouldn't have to stay overnight after all. YEAH! So by noon we were back home, exhausted but all in one piece. However, it went from a day that was supposed to be sunny and 100 degrees, to raining and 73 degrees (at noon)! So much for the zoo. Plus, Eric couldn't have gone anyway--don't need to sweat into the open MRSA infected abscess.

Our 4th was not shaping up to be much of a 4th. Everybody was tired and gripy. We decided that we would all take a nap and then go to a movie at 7pm--the new Ice Age movie. It was raining anyway, so there wouldn't be any chance of seeing fireworks from our house.

When we woke up from the nap it was bright and sunshiney! We ate a quick dinner and headed to the movie. When we drove into the shopping area that the movie theatre is at we saw a sign that they were having a big fireworks display. Cool! We watched the movie, which everybody liked. Well...Eric slept through most of it, being on pain pills. Parents, it is PG and should have been. But not cuss words (just a dang and a darn). A few adult humor jokes that went right over the kids' heads. But over all very cute.

After the movie we headed out into the madness of Jenks Riverwalk area. My sis bought the kids cook glow in the dark rings and swords (think circus fodder). We found a spot in the grass and waited for the show to start. We were delighted with the show. It was pretty long (35 minutes or so?) and the kids got in a sufficient number of "oohs" and "ahhs." The coolest thing about it was the storm that was brewing just behind the fireworks. The Lord added in his own fireworks show with lightening throughout the man made show! [If you look, you can see the lightening in the pic below.]

I really love my family and how diverse we have come. Four white parents with four multi-colored kids, from Cambodia, Vietnam, Ghana, and Guatemala. Our kids ADORE each other and have so much fun hanging out. Mia (our nice from Guatemala) is blind, but it doesn't slow her or the other kids down one bit.

After the fireworks display we had to endure over an hour of traffic to get out of the madhouse, but it was worth it. After we got home we all ate a quick midnight snack of apple crisp and ice cream (yum). Now everybody is in bed, and I'm blogging before I head that direction myself.

America has it's troubles, but I am so thankful to be an American. Until you have spent time outside of the country I don't think it's possible to truly understand how privileged we are simply to have been born where we were born. Most every place I go people speak English to me--I'm not expected to know their language. When I'm flying anywhere in the world, English is one of the languages. With my American passport it's easy for me to get a visa to travel almost anywhere in the world. With my American paycheck I am easily in the top 1% income of all peoples of the world. I have an easier ride in this world because I am American. There is no doubt about it. My husband is alive because he was born an American where we have health care and health insurance. My son is alive because he was able to immigrate to America and get that same care. Kendi's story will be the same. We have so much to be thankful for, not the least of which is being American.

So a day that started out bad, had a very nice ending. And when I think about it I should consider that maybe it didn't start out so bad after all. We had a health problem that was easily fixed, but would have probably killed Eric if we couldn't have driven 10 minutes to see qualified doctors and get specialized medicine to heal him. Guess it was an all good day after all!

Anita

P.S. The moral to the story: Let your husband continue to use his expensive quickly-used deoderant!