Bumps and Stings and a Hundred Other Things

Saturday evening things got exciting (bad exciting) at our house and haven't slowed down since. Claire was tipping a bar stool back and forth and it fell on her big toe, splitting it open under the nail bed. (When I told my dad, he asked, "What was she doing at the bar?" Just chillaxin' after a long day I guess.) Her toe looked dreadfully unnatural so we gave Todd a call, interrupting his golf game (that's how serious it was!) and told him to meet us at the ER. After a good long wait, the dr. saw her and determined that she would need to be sedated and have her toe numbed while he cut most of her toenail off and stitched the skin back together. Yuck! Her eyes were open while she was sedated and the dr. told me people often have hallucinations on this particular drug. When she came out of it I wanted to know what she'd experienced. She told me something about giraffes in a special closet :) So she's got her toe wrapped up and has been off her feet with her bad foot propped up since then.

Sunday afternoon we drove down to Eugene to pick up Janelle who'd been visiting Grandma and Grandpa Bevans for the week. We got home around midnight and I fell asleep almost instantly only to partially wake up a short time later to hear Janelle complaining about her hand hurting. I told her to show me in the morning and went back to sleep without so much as opening my eyes. She showed me first thing the next morning and her hand was swollen up so much it looked like one of those latex gloves filled with water. I took her down to the dr. right away, but she'd never been a patient there so the nurse didn't even come out and look at it. Instead the receptionist made an appt for us at 2pm. Her hand wasn't getting worse, and it wasn't hurting very bad, so I patiently waited the day out. Todd thought I should've taken her to the ER right away, but I wasn't worried enough to consider it an emergency. Besides, I had Claire laid up with her injury and the baby, and spending hours in the ER didn't sound like a good plan. When we finally saw the dr. she told us to take Janelle to the ER. Grrrr. I had to call Todd and tell him he was right (and to come home as soon as possible). I took Janelle and Eden and spent 2 1/2 more hours waiting in the ER. Finally we saw a dr. and he looked at it briefly and told us it was just a local reaction from a wasp most likely, that it was not infected and needed no treatment other than being raised to reduce swelling. That was a colossal waste of time! I had to call Todd immediately and inform him that I was right after all.

And to top it all off, today (after a follow-up appt for Claire's toe) we had to take Eden up to Portland to see a urology specialist. She has been diagnosed with bladder reflux which makes her more susceptible to kidney infections if she gets a bladder infection. This will be an ongoing thing for her as she has to have regular appointments to check on her progress.

So those are some of the things that have been frustrating and overwhelming lately, but they have also managed to bring into focus some things I am very grateful for. Namely, doctors, technology, medicine, insurance, and a hundred other things that make these things annoying, but not life-threatening. I'll take annoying.