Forever and ever...

On the evening of December 26th I was playing with Jackson on the living room floor after work. I ws on the phone with Camille and mentioned to her that he had a little bruise under his eye. I just figured he must have hit himself in the eye or bumped it earlier when I wasn't looking.

Recently, Jackson had a bump on his chest that I had chalked up to impetigo - something he's had before with his chronic eczema. It was pretty nasty but we were covering it with a bandaid and it seemed to not be bothering him. It dawned on me that this spot on his face looked similar to what the bump on his chest did several days earlier. So I went to google to try and understand what was going on. Through all the discusting images I searched nothing really looked like what had been on his chest, except maybe a spider bite, but even that didn't quite fit.

By the time Brad got home about 3 hours later Jackson's cheek had begun to swell up.

I called our pediatrian's office and spoke with the on-call nurse. She said that as long as Jackson wasn't running a fever and there were no red lines radiating from the bump then to just wait until the morning to see the pediatrician.

That night when we were undressing him for his bath the bump on his chest "ruptured". It was nauseating what came out of it. And then it began to bleed. I went back online and broadened my search. That's when I found images for MRSA. It looked EXACTLY like all the images of a staph infection in the first few days. I read the profile on WebMD and was too scared to tell Brad what I read.

Needless to say none of slept well that night. I laid there stairing at Jackson and silently prayed that what he had wasn't as serious as I had read online.

The next morning, Jackson eye was swelling shut. His cheek was red and he was clearly in pain. He went to work with Brad. As soon as the doctor's office opened up Brad was there waiting. It didn't do much good because they told him to come back at 11:00. I was able to sneak out and meet up with them.

Jackson's regular doctor wasn't available so we saw a back-up (her name escapes me right now). When she came in and asked what was going on I told her I thought he had a staph infection. She said that is exactly what he had. She prescribed two types of antibiotics and told us to come back at 9am the next day. If it wasn't better she would send us somewhere to have it drained. Before we left she called in a nurse so they could take a sample of the fluid from Jackson's chest for a culture. I broke down. It was one of the hardest moments I've had to experience as a mommy. To see someone hurting my baby...to hear him cry in pain like that...and there was nothing I could do.

I had no idea we would experience so much worse in the days to come.

Trying to get the antibiotics from the pharmacy was a joke. We left the pharmacy at 11:00 am on Thursday and it was 5:00 pm before I was even able to pick up ONE of the antibiotics. The other one had to be ordered and as I'm writing this I realize we STILL haven't received a call (it's been four days). The swelling continued and after a near fall just the pressure on his face left him crying for two hours in pain before he finally passed out. Another sleepless night of fear and unknowning.

We finally got up around 4:30 am on Friday morning. The only way to describe Jackson's face is "deformed". His eye was almost completely swollen shut and the side of his face was shiney, red and swollen. We debated waiting four and half hours for the doctor's appointment, but we wanted to give the prescription some more time to work. Every minute last forever. I gave up and decided to be standing at the door when the office opened at 8:30. Brad met me there.

We saw the same doctor. He took one look at Jackson and said she wanted us admitted to the children's hospital so they could lance and drain the abscess that was causing the swelling. We waited about an hour while she made some calls. All the beds were full so finally she told us to just go to the children's ER and they would get us in.

We walked through the doors at Methodist Children's Hospital around 11:00 am on Friday morning. The receptionist asked our last name. Rabel....and before we could tell her anything else she said, "Let me see him." We turned the stroller around and she turned to the woman next to her. "Take him back next." We immediately went around the corner for vitals and then went straight back to a room. Half a dozen medical personnel came in to ask questions, check vitals, get Jackson ready and to get us settled in. Then two nurses came in, asked Brad to hold down Jackson and they began to hook up his IV port.

I thought the previous day at the pediatricians was hard. This lasted twice as long. I stood off to the side while Brad held Jackson down. I covered my face and tried to hold back the tears but I just couldn't leave the room. When it was finally over my little baby was in an over-sized infant hospital gown and had tubes and tape all up his left arm.

Nana then came by. And we waited...and waited...and waited. As the day went on, nurses came and went to get Jackson hooked up to IV medicines. We went for a CT scan (I held Jackson while they pushed me in a wheelchair...awkward) and "Auntie Carissa" did Jackson's scan. Finally, Dr. Burrell showed up. He said that Jackson had a bad staph infection that was creating an abscess around his eye. The CT scan had shown that the infection hadn't gotten into his eye or brain...ruling out the possibilty of menigitis or losing his eye. But they couldn't rule out surgery at the time. The plan was to continue to administer steroids, antibiotics, an anti-itch medication, fluids and an anti-fungal and reassess him the next day.

Nana had to go home and Grandma stopped by. It was so nice for Jackson to see his two favorite ladies other than mommy. When Grandma left we settled in for the night in the ER.

To be continued....