Friday, February 22, 2008

Fun in the E.R.

I think the Emergency Room at Prince William Hospital and our family, might just be on a first name basis at this point. We seem to get ourselves there at least every other month for either stitches or mystery stomach ailments (I am the only one that seems to stay away from there but frequents every other doctor in the area).

Yesterday Ethan was complaining that his (we are all adults so I can use the proper terminology, okay people?!), right testicle was hurting really bad. We sent him to school and when he arrived home, he was still in pain. After dinner, we decideded to call our pediatrician to rule out a bladder infection. She called back immediately and told us to go directly to the E.R.

We love the E.R. We love to sit in the waiting room for 2 hours. We love when we finally are escorted to a room with a lovely "privacy curtain" with a neighbor coughing up who knows what. We absolutely love when we find out we get to wait on our comfortable metal bed with "book-like" comfortable pillow, for another hour waiting for that doctor. When she/he finally arrives, we are thrilled our wait is over, to find out the doctor wants to run some tests. He of course can't run those tests, so he calls for another doctor. That doctor takes at least an hour to come in. Hallalujeh, the tests are taken. But we love when we find we have to wait 3 hours for those tests and another hour for the doctor to give us his diagnosis.

That about sums up each visit at the E.R.

Anyway, on with our story. Garth graciously offers to take Ethan. I meanwhile start searching the web to find out why we have been told to get ourselves to the ER immediately. I start freaking out when I read that he has all the symptoms for a testicular torsion. That is when the testicle's blood supply gets cut off. If surgery isn't performed within 6 hours, he can lose that testicle. After having blood work and an ultrasound (the baby looks fine and is...drum roll...a healthy baby girl), the doctor says he seems fine and can...after waiting for 5 hours...GO HOME!

We were very relieved that he was okay. We have to watch him carefully the next few days and the doctor asked us to make sure he wears, "tighty whities" instead of Ethan's preference to boxers.

Luckily we had a "huge" snow/ice storm last night and so therefore school was cancelled and Garth didn't have to teach seminary...and I have the delight of having 5 restless kids home wondering why there is no snow and it is raining? GO VIRGINIA!

5 comments:

Robyn said...

Sounds like everyone had a ball!

Robyn said...

Sounds like everyone had a ball!

Monica said...

Man, Heather this winter has not been good to you or your family!! I'm almost afraid to look at your blog in fear that someone else is sick or hurt. Hope life at the Porter house gets better soon! Oh and I love E.Rs
too...they are always so warm and fuzzy!

Johnsons of Haymarket said...

I really think Prince William's ER is just about the worst there is. Every time I have gone in they comment on how "busy" it is and everything takes forever! I am glad that it doesn't seem to be anything too serious with Ethan and it was a pleasure to be able to be in the ER with you guys at the same time. We should do it again sometime!

a10cowwoman said...

Once we took Joshi to the ER at 8pm. One stich and almost 9 hrs latter we got home. It was fun night full of waiting like yours.

Zayne had a testicular torsion. The pain would come and go. They never caught it on ultrasound. He finally had it surgically repaired last August.