We almost made it. We were SO close. In three short weeks, it would have been a year. And that could have been some sort of world record for our family.
I believe I may have mentioned that we spend time at the U of M hospital. Visiting all of our close personal Dr. and Nurse friends. That’s where The Boy and I spent our Thursday evening.
I will start at the beginning, so you can have a more well rounded picture.
Last weekend, The Boy went on a weekend retreat with the Youth Group at church. It was all high school guys. It was at someone’s cabin. That they so graciously volunteered. I told The Boy that I would have never done that in a zipple, million, trillion years.
Anyway, evidently there was a tackle football game going on. And he thinks it happened on a certain play. He gave me the blow by blow details on it, but sport talk, like fish talk, makes my eyes glaze over, and I cannot relay the details for you. Please accept my apologies.
He was pretty sure he pulled a muscle. When he came limping home on Sunday, we laughed and joked about his athletic prowess, and that was that.
He explained that it stiffened up when he sat, but it loosened up as he walked around. He started feeling better around Tuesday.
On Wednesday evening he went to work, where he stands quite a bit, and he said it began to bother him a lot. When I picked him up after his shift, it was sprinkling. And we believe, after much discussion, that this is where it happened.
He said he ran to the car. I had to contradict him at this part, to say that I saw no running, maybe he hurried. But, ever since then, he was ruined.
When he came home from school yesterday, he was walking like something I have not seen before. He had this weird, long strided, old man, gimpy thing going on. And his calf was swollen, impressively.
I called the Dr., explained the situation much briefer than I have done here, and took him on over an hour later. I used the hour to clean our bathroom and shower. Honey is doing the Happy Dance. It’s good to feel like you accomplished something during the day.
Because I KNEW there would be no more accomplishments that day.
The Dr. checked him out, measured his calf, yes, it was impressively larger, touched his feet, yes the one was colder, and used scary words like blood clot, compartmental syndrome, and permanent damage (i.e. foot death???). I also wonder if his thick, four inch chart caused her to err on the side of caution. She recommended we go to a very nice emergency room called St. Very Good Hospital.
But we have been to this hospital before, and sooner or later, The Boy’s non-related condition ALWAYS becomes all about his chronic ITP . We have been referred to 2 other hospitals in the past and they don’t want to deal with him. Then they send him back to U of M., where his Dr’s live. And because I KNOW how these things go, I asked if we could just cut out the middle hospital and go directly to The U. And bless her angelic heart, she said sure, and in a move I will always appreciate, she called and told them we were coming.
The emergency room at The U. is always an experience. Always busy, always interesting characters. And they were busy. I was ever so thankful for the Dr.’s call. Cause it helped a lot! I’m pretty sure many people were wishing hateful stuff on us, as we were ushered back.
Personally, I was just happy to get away from the poor older woman with dementia, who was talking and laughing incessantly. Singing “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” over and over, really fast. Seriously, those were the only words I understood, before that I had thought she was speaking in another language. And before you take me to task for slamming the elderly, let me explain. You know how sometimes in church something gets you tickled? And you cannot stop laughing? And you are BITING YOUR CHEEKS because you know how totally inappropriate the whole thing is, but you cannot stop? We were on the verge, my Friends, the very verge. The Boy and I were NOT looking at one another.
This trip had a bit of nostalgia for us as well. I told The Boy that since he is almost 17 and 1/2, this would probably, most likely, hopefully, surely, be his last trip to the pediatric ER. He said he would miss having Bob the Builder on the door.
The Nurse who called us back was a gal I had been in discussion with at BSF about 8 years ago. We have seen her here before. We talked about the mission trips she goes on. The Boy said she put his IV in AWESOME! And he knows what he likes.
Then started the parade of The Herd. Probably 5 Dr.’s and nurses checking this and that, instructing others on the this and that. And telling us about the this and that. It was during the waiting for The Herd that The Boy entertained me endlessly by telling me about his adventures trying to navigate his school in his gimpy condition. My favorite part was the telling of his climbing the stairs, and the back-ups he caused. I told him I was FOR SURE getting a post out of this. He suggested we bring the camera, to document the ER trip. He even offered to guest host for me again. We forgot the camera. But we did bring a deck of cards 
!
After the poking and prodding, blood draw, discovery of petechai, ultrasound and a detailed look at his veins and arteries, it was concluded that he had no blood clots, no fear of sudden foot death, but he did have a semi- low platelet count, high white blood count, a large hematoma, tears in his muscle belly and very small arteries, because he doesn’t run. They wrapped it in a compression bandage, gave him a pair of crutches and told him to ice and elevate.
Which probably means he is totally normal for him and he has a really, really bad pulled muscle, exacerbated by his little sprint in the rain. And I am very thankful he won’t walk the way he has been walking forever, because it is a little embarrassing to be seen with him in this state.
I don’t think this will even make it into the Christmas card.
