wow - this is so much easier with my laptop - thank you Tamar!
Okay - today was super busy, but veery productive and we have reservedly good news, so I’ll skip right to the juicy part:
It looks like the treatment is working - and they (some of them, anyway) think they know what the cause is.
Last night I ran out of the uphearin without helping to clean up (sorry!) because I had a ride back with Tzvi, and anyway Michal had been watching Ilana for lmost 6 hours already(Thanks yous)
I got to the hospital around 9:30 to meet a tired by happy Ilana. Her fever had not returned all day, and the swelling was a little better.
I put her in Jammies and she went to sleep.
At 1:00 she woke up crying. I tried to calm her, but she was restless. I took her to the hallway, where a nurse saw me and asked if I wanted acamol to help her pain.
Right! I said to myself, as I made the connection in my little brain. Hospital =drugs=mmm mmm good!
so she brought me neurofen, and within 20 minutes, Ilana was lights out for the night.
She woke up aound 9, after her antibiotices, in a great mood.
I had davened already, checked in @ work and gotten my ducks in a row.
Then came the doctors. They came in droves, like my chevy used to do.
First it was the general ‘i see everybody’ doctor. She told us that it’s good to see her fever is gone, the swelling is a bit less, the affected area feels cooler and she was able to stand and rest the toes of her foot on the ground - she’s much less sensitive there, baruch Hashem.
Then it was ‘specialist-i’ve been a doctor 30 year’ doctor.
He discussed the issue at length, and told us the blood tests came back with a strep viridans in the culture (feel free to look it up, I’d never heard of it either.)
At any rate, he said it was just there because of the infection, and 99% of the time it’s harmless. BUT, in a very small percentage of adults it can cause a heart issue. soooo, just to be sure - get up to cardiology on the tenth floor, find the doctor yourself and get it checked out. Oh - and take your medical record with you and bring it back to us when you’re done. Oh, and watch out for the 15 janitors standing outside your room on the way out all speaking arabic.
On to the 10th floor. They were waiting for us, so I had no time for elevators. Am I boring you? Me too. I’ll switch to the quick version.
Cardiologist: she has a great heart - and such beautiful valves!
Mike: Thanks - we’ve been changing her oil every 5000 miles!
Cardiologist smiles, thinks to himself: such a beautiful heart, too bad she has a lunatic for a father.
He discusses with another doctor on the phone empahtically: Why do you think it’s septic arthritis? Her *insert big medical word here* was only 5000?… So what - lots of other things also ake it that you can’t put pressure on your foot/limb!… Hangs up - (to me):Okay - go to the -I’m the professor who stuck your daughter with a needle on thursday and extracted 5cc+ of liquid from your ankle joint on thursday- doctor on the 8th floor - he’s waiting for you.
Good luck trying to find his office.
Well, we found him.
He was also happy yo see the swelling went down.
His bottom line:
Wait and see another day - but the trick is: when Ilana’s back to running on her left foot, it means we can discuss going home.
In the meanwhile, we can keep praying.
Once all the doctor visits were finished, we came back to the room and Ilana got into her bed, happy and safe to be away from all the poking, prodding, pushing, and phunny machinery.
Then we napped, got our afternoon medicine, and went for a walk @ 3.
Here’s a picture of Ilana feeding her bamba to the birds:
Tamar and the kids met us for pizza and some family time @ 5.
We then walked to a nearby park until 8.
By 8, the kids were ll in jammies and in the car, except Ilana :(
She and I walked ‘home’ slowly, learned a few minutes before maariv, davened, changed our diaper, took a bath, put on jammies, got our nightly dose, and went to sleep with a bottle of formula.
Half an hour later she kvetched and sat up.
I helped her lie bck down, gave her her shmire, and ran to the nurses station for 5cc of the good stuff. I learned my lesson well.
Fool me once - shame on you; fool me twice, well… It’ll probably happen again then.
She’s sleeping soundly and so should I be. Good night - thanks for your concern and your tefillos. And thanks to the people who went shopping for us today - (you know who you are!)