Tyler's trip to the E.R.

In the middle of the night on Thursday Tyler woke up crying and saying his heart hurt. Your heart hurts? Can that be right? He was dying in pain and Derek and I just didn't know what to do. We gave him some Ibuprofen, calmed him down, and then he went back to sleep. Friday morning he wakes up and everything is fine - off he goes to school. Derek and I talked that morning about what it could have been. We talked ourselves into the idea that maybe he's slept weird and pinched a nerve or something. We could talk ourselves into thinking this was a one-time freak thing.

Then that afternoon I hear the bus come home, I wait the 30 seconds it takes Tyler to walk the one house down from the bus stop. I wait for him to come in the door and instead of hearing him walk in, I hear knocking on the front door. There's Tyler, bawling, and Michelle (my neighbor), and her 2 kids. She said that Tyler got off the bus crying and saying his heart hurts. She was so worried about him that she walked him home. I get Tyler inside and ask him a million questions. It hurts just the same as the night before.

I call our doctor to ask what we should do (a.k.a.: we're coming in so get ready). I talk to the nurse and she says she really recommends that we go to the ER so they can do any monitoring that might need to be done. So I call Derek who'd gone into the office that afternoon and give him his choice: Tyler at ER or kids at home. He picks Tyler. To save time I loaded up the kids and met Derek at the hospital. By the time we get there Tyler is acting totally fine - I mean, completely fine. Isn't that always how it is? If you have a sick kids, just drive them to the doctor - they'll be fine by the time you get there.

So Derek and I are looking at him in the parking lot, and I'm starting to rethink this visit. Derek says no, we've had health professionals tell us to take him the ER! So in Tyler and Derek go. This leave me at home with three kids (read that as: out of the loop!) I tell Derek to call me every 30 minutes to give me the update. Derek did better than that - I started getting texts on the way home and Derek kept them coming.

The texts looked like this: "We're in" "Tyler in hospital gown" "waiting" "chest x-ray ordered" "waiting" "x-rays done" "waiting" "results back" - on and on they go. Derek did a great job of keeping me in the loop. Through texts I found out that at first they did a chest x-ray and that came back showing something - to find out what, would take a CAT scan. So Tyler had a CAT scan and then they could see what was there. Turns out he has pneumonia.

They gave him an antibiotic prescription for 5 days and sent him on his way. He hasn't complained once since he's been home about any pain. In fact, he's been acting like his completely maniac self. He played and played outside on Saturday, has slept fine, and is completely fine (which makes the fact that I stayed home with him on Saturday night while I wanted to be at my sister-in-law's house so badly for a great get-together much worse! I just thought we needed one more day on the antibiotic to make sure we weren't spreading this.).

I was convincing my mom that pneumonia couldn't really look like this and she told me it's probably 'walking pneumonia' - I informed her that this isn't 'walking' this is 'run around and be completely normal pneumonia'. So in short, may all of you who have to have pneumonia have 'run around and be completely normal pneumonia'.

The hospital gave Tyler a popsicle for his bravery!