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hey y'all. figured it would be easier to shotgun this info out all at once: Oscar is fine. a quick timeline of events:
- Monday, February 14th, he banged his head right next to his left eye. it was nothing remarkable and barely even broke the skin. this is at least a tri-weekly occurrence.
- by Saturday the 19th, it had gotten worse, instead of better, although it still wasn't "bad". just a little red dot that wasn't there before.
- by Monday the 21st, it looked terrible and i suggested Andrea take him to the Pediatrician Tuesday, which she did.
- the idiot doctor who saw him Tuesday (22nd) decided to give him a powerful antibiotic shot that is relatively useless at fighting skin infections (so my sources tell me).
- Wednesday (23rd), it was still bad so Andrea took him back and they put him on an oral antibiotic.
- we had planned on taking a long weekend at the beach, but with his eye the way it was, i sent Andrea without us (she was attending a blog conference). this was Thursday the 24th.
- his eye looked horrible and other little sores popped up around the main one. i made an appointment for Friday morning to see a 3rd doctor.
- Friday the 25th, his primary doctor saw his eye and made arrangements to have him go to the hospital to start taking IV antibiotics, since as he put it, "we don't have the upper hand here". the close proximity to his eye and the fact that it wasn't responding to the other medicine concerned him and the IV stuff was going to knock it out. we were all afraid it was a MRSA infection, which would suck. he took a culture off the sore and sent it off to the lab. i called Andrea and she left right away to make the 3 hour trip home. Monica left work and came to the hospital to be with us, which was a life saver. when Andrea showed up to relieve her, she then swung by the house and picked up Krusty to keep him overnight. they started Oscar's IV and gave him 30 minutes worth of medicine every 8 hours for 24 hours. yay.
- Saturday morning, the 26th, his eye wasn't noticeably better, but they sent us home anyway. still no word on the culture. our Pediatrician called to check on us and assumed since we had been discharged that the infection was all but gone. he asked how it looked and Andrea mentioned it wasn't all that different, aside from less puffiness. he was alarmed at this and told us to come in Sunday to see him again.
- Sunday, the 27th...almost 2 weeks to the day after this whole thing began...he and Andrea wondered if it wasn't bacterial at all, but viral. Andrea and her family are susceptible to cold sores, which as you know is just a form of the herpes virus. Dr. Bo took a viral culture and sent it off, and to be on the safe side, started Oscar on an antiviral medicine. **Edit - He also made an appt. for Oscar to see a Pediatric Ophthalmologist on Monday**
- Monday, nothing to report. **Edit - Ped. Ophthalmologist agreed it looked like it may be viral, and that if so, it would be almost unprecedented**
- Tuesday, March 1st, Dr. Bo called and told Andrea the viral culture came back positive.
at long last, we now know the following:
- Oscar had an outbreak of herpes on his face. essentially, a cold sore right next to his eye. this is almost unheard of and threw everybody so much that not only did it delay proper treatment by almost 2 weeks, it had people prescribing super-strong antibiotics that were really hard on his little body for nothing. we spent a night in the hospital for nothing. i could go on and on, but i guess i don't blame them. Mom and Sam couldn't believe it was a virus, either, and i trust them more than these jerkoff's up here...so i will extend a little grace. to the jerkoff's.
- once this heals up (and it is healing), it may never happen again. or if it does, it will hopefully happen in the normal place in the form of a regular old cold sore on his lips.
Through all this, Oscar never acted sick or like he was in any discomfort. but if you see the pictures (and you will when Andrea blogs about it this week), you'll see how disgusting his sore was and how scary it was for us. we/i thought it was a MRSA infection and if you do a google image search for MRSA, you'll see why i was so worried. when the antibiotics didn't help, we thought maybe it was a super strong strain of bacteria that was resistant even to the antibiotics they use for resistant strains of bacteria! we were like, "now what??". we thought maybe his body wasn't responsive to antibiotics. we thought lots of scary things. i got angry that he was going through this and that he would possibly have a big scar on his face for the rest of his life, or that he could go blind in one eye...it's just what parents do, i suppose. but we are very thankful that even though we apparently have weak faith in the face of turmoil, God took care of our little boy and is continuing to do so every day. thank you, God!
thanks to everyone for your concerns. look forward to our next get together.
love,
The Raleigh Updykes
