Didn't We Just Do This??

Last week I shared a crazy day, the central point of which was taking my youngest son Henry to Urgent Care with an ear infection.

Yesterday, it was my oldest son, Tony.  He managed to not have a common ear infection, though.  He has a circular pneumonia on his left lung.  I am going to have to google that to know exactly what that means, but I know a few things it means:

$112 worth of antibiotics, which took almost two hours to have filled because of the precise amounts of dosage and the times the two are administered.  Several phone calls were made between the pharmacy and the doctor, while four hungry boys sat in the waiting area at Schnucks.  I must note, they behaved much better than some of the adults who were in line and complaining about the wait, their insurance, etc. 

And......

His very first chest x-ray!  We got a bit of a scare, because the doctor wanted him to go to the hospital and have a CT scan to make sure it was pneumonia (What else could it be?  I did not even want to know.).  But, the radiologist at the hospital said it looked like pneumonia, and to treat it as such.

So now I need to call his regular doctor and get an appointment for late next week to follow up and see how he is doing.  I dread going to the regular doctor, because it is so hard to get an appointment, but hopefully if I call a week in advance I can get in!

All in all, the boys were really troopers through the whole event.  For four boys to not fight and be reasonably patient through a couple hours in a doctor office and then a couple hours in a pharmacy is pretty good.  While we were at the doctor's I left my two middle boys, ages 7 and 10, in the waiting area and just kept coming back to peek at them.  They were either talking, playing their DSs or reading medical brochures.  I saw other children whose parents were right there in the room climbing on the furniture, etc.  I was proud of my guys. 

While the boys were behaving so well, I was getting really, really tired and really, really cranky.  I'd left the house at 8:00 a.m. worked all morning, had a lovely breakfast with my friend Faith (I am so glad -thinking back over our conversation that morning got me through the afternoon!) ran some errands, took all the boys for haircuts (I know, he had pneumonia but that is not excuse for poor grooming!) and then the Urgent Care adventure began.  While we were waiting for our prescription I was listening to a lady who was really rude to the pharmacists.  They had problems with her insurance, needed more info, etc. and she was getting snotty.  "Well, isn't that YOU'RE job to call them?  Well, can't YOU take care of that?"  This reluctance to make a phone call from a woman who was sitting there with her cell phone out the entire time.  I watched her and thought, "Yep, that is how you sound too, sometimes - don't judge, learn!"  Everyone can be a lesson - some teach me what to do, some teach me what NOT to do.

After all that, we ate carryout for dinner.  I felt mildly guilty.  I bought a couple fried chickens at the Schnucks deli (actually pretty good), made instant mashed potatoes, microwaved a bag of frozen brussel sprouts and had applesauce.  Not a great meal, but no one cared.  Tony got both his medications down, which is pretty amazing from a guy who can take an hour to ingest 2 tsp. of Tylenol.  Now we just pray for healing, administer antibiotics and move on.