We walked in the door Thursday evening after soccer practice and were greeted by Dad. The kids were thrilled as he tickled each one as they entered and gave them a squeeze. As he gave Liz a squeeze he bumped her neck.
“Ow! That still hurts!”
Excuse me? But what still hurts? Turns out that the area where her lymph node is has been hurting (only noticible when pushed on – and then you have to push on it HARD for it to really hurt at all) since the beginning of September. Okay, so why wasn’t I notified of this issue? Apparantly she mentioned it to Paul at the time, but only as “my neck hurts a little” and was written off as a stiff neck. Nothing more was mentioned.
It wouldn’t have been that big a deal if, when we felt it, we hadn’t found a rather large lump. I know lymph nodes swell up from time to time. But she hadn’t had any fever, sore throat, nothing. She was eating normally, and had normal energy level. And, since we didn’t feel her neck back in September, we had no idea if it had appeared recently, or been there for two months. And had it grown? Who knows.
One thing we did know, was that I was getting her in to se the doctor at the next available moment. So, Friday I hauled her in. Dot was home sick with a sudden cold, but Liz was still as healthy as they come. The doc check it out and frowned. Then he checked her ears and throat, felt it again and frowned some more. “the size of a pea or a lima bean, doesn’t concern me,” he said. “The size of acorns and walnuts conerns me.” He gave another frown and looked at me. “This is a good sized acorn.” He grilled me on fevers, sore throats, and all those things I mentioned earlier. And frowned some more at my answers. He rattled off a number of possibilities, most of which include symptoms and sent us over to the hospital for blood tests.
I was a nervouse wreck waiting for those test results. I don’t do well with waiting. And one of the tests was too scary to think about. So I tried to occupy myself as much as possible. Meanwhile, Elizabeth went back to school and Dot and the boys hung out with me.
The doctor called just after his office closed, two of test results were in and, thank goodness both were negative – the one for mono, and the one looking for lymphocytes (double thank goodness). The white blood cell count was slightly elevated, indicating that she could be fighting an infection, so he called in a strong antibiotic that she gets to take two times a day.
Saturday morning she woke up and this time she did have a sore throat – and a fever. She’s been hanging out at 103 since then. The thing is, I have no idea if it is related to the swollen lymph node or not, because when it happened she was fine, and EVERYONE in the family is catching this nasty cold. Granted, the others have only had a fever as high as 100, and it only lasted a day or so. But, I would assume that it is related, you know the saying – “Don’t borrow trouble” – and believe me we don’t want to. Oh, and the other good thing is that the lump doesn’t seem to be getting bigger – though I don’t know that it is getting any smaller either – time will tell. After all, it has only been 2 days, and I have no idea how fast these things go, etc.
So, I have the whole family home from church today. Dot doesn’t have a fever anymore, but she still has a pretty bad cough and sore throat, Emily has a fever at 100 & cough sore throat, Jacob has the same as Emily. James isn’t sick yet (though he had a slight cough this morning) but I didn’t figure on his needing to attend church figuring he’s got the germs already, lets keep him home so as not to get others sick. Liz is – well the same as listed above.
I will check in the doctor about Elizabeth’s fever and stuff tomorrow and see what he says – until then we’ll just ride it out and assume the lymph node was swollen because she was getting a cold.
I am off now to seperate a batch of squabbling sick kids… 🙂
Fun and Flawed 