Monthly Archive

It’s my experience that as we get closer to walking a path closer to God, it tends to mobilize the forces that get pissed off when someone moves closer to God. I’ve decided that I’m unafraid to label it as such even if it only serves to label me. 

My husband and I are on the cusp of some big and powerful and faith-filled changes, and our three year old son has been sent through the medical wringer for the last couple of weeks.

 This is a child who screams bloody murder at the mere mention of brushing his teeth, so protective of his personal space he is. (Now if I could get him to feel protective of the right to use the potty, we would be getting somewhere.) 

As you can imagine, he doesn’t open his mouth or ears or eyes for any doctor or nurse in the world, so when he came down with a fever two weeks ago and decided that he couldn’t walk anymore because his knee hurt, no one really expected him to be a model patient.  Our new favorite nurse practitioner did manage to take a peek in his throat and take x-rays and get a finger-prick, which showed suspicious gran and lymph readings, and we were immediately sent to an orthopedic specialist.  He brought in the whole orthopedic team to move our little guy’s legs around, and our J. was such a trooper.

The doctors talked about bacterial versus viral infections and mentioned rheumatoid arthritis. 

And they wanted to draw blood.  Two whole tubes of it.  While we talked, the toddler fell asleep on my lap.  His sister colored happily. 

I was worried about waking him up by sticking a needle into him.  My husband and I debated about how it was going to go, and then the nurses entered with a dose of condescension, suggesting that,”Oh, is Mom going to be okay?  Do you want to wait in the hallway?”

Does the bitch want to get slapped?

I was staying right there, to watch them do their job.  Or to see them mess up their job, which was actually the case.  For ten painfully long minutes, I watched my son fight harder than I’ve ever seen him fight.  “Kicking and screaming” doesn’t quite do it justice.  It was determined wailing and flailing.  He was on a mission.  The nurses struggled and jabbed and scraped the needle around in his little arm.  At one point, the timiest bit of blood started to flow.

Then the nurse let go. 

And the needle fell out of his arm. 

Finally they decided that he was traumatized enough and they said they’d try at the next day’s appointment.  So we took him home with orders to pump him with ibuprofen (translation: sit on toddler and get medicine spit into our faces every eight hours).  When the next day came, they decided that the toddler truly was a worthy opponent and they skipped the blood draw.

Days went by, still no walking.  And we gave up on the ibuprofen.  A few more phone calls, another office visit, theories about cartilage, then an MRI last Friday, at a clinic 40 miles away. My husband took him alone and this is where I get to sing the praises of a partner who truly helps to carry the load.  He is a loving caregiver to our children, and I’m absolutely blessed to be sharing a family with him. 

I just about changed my mind and took the day off work when I heard that they planned to administer the sedative through an IV. 

That meant starting an IV while he was awake.  And yes, S. reports that he flailed and fought, but the medicine was quick.

Since he was going to be sedated for the MRI, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to draw blood.  After the scan, they inserted the needle to take the sample.

And it woke him right up.  And so went the wailing and flailing. 

They did manage to draw the sample, and my husband drove a very tired and cranky toddler 40 miles home.  When a call came only a few hours later from the clinic, he was hopeful about hearing results.  The last thing we expected to hear was that the blood sample was drawn improperly.

You heard me right.

Today, along with the scan results (no fracture), we learned what happened to the blood sample.  Get ready for this. 

Seriously, you’re not going to believe this:

The nurse did not put a label on the tube of blood. 

She went to lunch and no one could find her and the 30 minute window they had according to protocol to get the label on passed.  My son’s blood has been tossed out in the biohazardous trash because no one bothered to put his name on it.

It could very well be that blood tests will not reveal to us exactly what is going on in J’s little legs, but it sure may help the doctors rule out a few things.  

In the meantime, J. is back to walking most of the time, but still complaining of his knees feeling “tired” and has even pointed out pain in his ankle as well.  His fever is gone. 

And we’ve had enough of small town doctors.  We  gladly accepted a referral to see a rheumatologist at Minneapolis Children’s Hospital next week.  Maybe someone there will know how to take a blood sample from a beligerent three year old. 

And put a label on it.