Doctor's Visits Galore

Let's just say that if there was a prize for most doctor's visits or amount of time spent at and/or commuting to doctor's visits for a 28-hour period, Teddy and I would have been strong contenders.

It all started Thursday morning when I decided to try on one of three shirts I was considering donating. Somehow, in the amount of time it took me to pull on one shirt, Teddy hurt himself with a smooth, rounded plastic coat hanger. My first clue was him crying. My second clue was his mouth filling with blood. There was so much blood in his mouth that he couldn't swallow while screaming hysterically. In fact, when he coughed on the blood, my face got splattered with blood.

It took me a half hour of wiping blood away, consoling him and attempting to peer in his mouth with a flashlight to figure out where the injury was. My best guess is that he stuck a coat hanger in his mouth, fell or dropped to the floor and pierced the bottom of his tongue by jamming that hanger into it. The injury didn't go completely through, but I got a glimpse finally of a wicked looking wound that prompted me to head right to the walk-in clinic.

The walk-in clinic took one look at his tongue and said that something needed to be done, but they couldn't do it there. So they walked us down to the Emergency Room. This was our first time back at the ER since the horrible seizure incident in December, so it's not exactly where I wanted to be. Neither did Teddy. Between the pain and the fear of doctor's offices/procedure rooms, he was crying the entire time despite being snuggled by a carrier to the front of my body. (Umm, can I get a gold star for managing to get him loaded on my front and hooking the back by myself 3 times in 1 hour? That's a record for me.)

The ER doctor took one, quick (not quite sure he saw everything) look and said it would heal itself. He said he could put in a stitch, but that would require sedation and would likely be chewed out within minutes. I was fine with that and figured Teddy would settle down pretty quickly once we left.

But he didn't.

Thankfully Dave came home early from work and then spent all afternoon at home while Teddy cried, whimpered, napped for 30 minutes and cried some more. He finally settled down after supper (without eating or drinking much because of the pain). Let's just say it was a long day from 10:30 a.m. when the injury happened until I collapsed into bed at 9 p.m.

Unfortunately, the pain medicine wore off, so Teddy was crying in pain at 3:30 a.m. That meant that all of us, including AJ, were wide awake by 4 a.m. Teddy settled down about 30 minutes after his medicine kicked in, but no one got any more sleep.

Teddy and I took off at 6 a.m. to head to Milwaukee for a couple doctor's appointments. The first was his ENT, which was extremely quick as usual. We'll be getting a call within a week to schedule surgery to remove his adenoids the end of March/beginning of April. This is a good thing in our minds. It should hopefully minimize ear infections and reduce his chronic runny nose.

We enjoyed a bit of time with my aunt before we headed to his physiatrist appointment. This was one of the recommendations from NIH, and I wasn't sure what to expect. I was pleasantly surprised because the person was fantastic with Teddy and spent 1.5 hours getting a really detailed history, observing Teddy's motions and body and discussing recommendations. She's coordinating with the person who does Teddy's braces to adjust them slightly to give him more toe mobility to help with balance, but she doesn't think we need to pursue different (taller) braces. She said we can discontinue the use of his SPIO compression garments once he outgrows the current pair as they tend to provide minimal assistance once he reaches this size. She's also going to put in orders for outpatient PT and speech therapy and coordinate with them about pursuing therapy now and then for the summer.

In case you haven't gathered, a physiatrist is a doctor of physical rehabilitation who coordinates therapies and adapted equipment. We had never heard of that type of specialist before NIH, but I'm excited to have someone to coordinate all his therapy between outpatient and at school as well as all his adapted equipment. I think this will be a good thing for us, and it will likely be paired in the future with a neurodevelopmental psychologist to help understand how to best motivate Teddy to work toward progress. That'll happen this summer, at the earliest, since it will be a series of lengthy appointments to really get to know Teddy. The physiatrist will look the report we get from NIH once we get it and see if it's sufficient. My guess is that it won't be as thorough as desired, so we'll probably go through the process. The appointments should be mostly play based, which really shouldn't be bad. It's just that we need some time between the week of NIH testing and any more extended testing appointments.

After that, we had our drive back home, getting home at 2 p.m. with a full 8 hours of travel and doctors' appointments. Now, where's our medal?