Today we hung out in the ER... You read that right, after all of the craziness in my life these last few weeks, today we spend over five hours in the ER. Our oldest, who was the child with the worst case of COVID is now, weeks later, having residual side effects of this virus. All of our cases were mild in comparison to the awful stories that we have read, but the residual is proving to be truly heartbreaking. Our son started complaining about 5 days ago of a bad pain in his abdomen. We chalked it up to COVID because we all had a touch of gastro nasty with our cases. Day-by-day he got worse. He is tough. Like, broke his arm in four places at 2 yrs old and let the doctor reset his arm without being sedated, and realigned his own out-of-socket hip during wrestling season kind of tough. Yesterday he woke up crying and I noticed throughout the day that his stomach appeared visibly swollen. This morning he could barely get out of bed. No more playing around, we were out the door.
After one ultrasound, several vials of blood, and one CT with contrast, we are finally to the bottom of what is going on. This poor child has what is called "Mesenteric Adenitis." Basically, the infection left over from COVID has caused all of the lymph nodes in his abdominal wall to swell to max capacity causing him extreme pain. He was given half a dose of Morphine, one adult Tylenol (325) and one adult Mortin (200) and was still hunched over in pain if that tells you anything about how bad this kid was hurting.
I wanted to hop on and tell our story about residual side effects for a couple of reasons: 1 - I care about you guys and I want you to know everything we have been through so you know what to look for if you end up with COVID. 2 - So many things about this virus are being overlooked or not talked about and I didn't want our story to be left quiet. 3 - I want to be able to look back on this a year or two from now and remember to be thankful that we are all seemingly okay (he will heal from this) from a virus where so many weren't so fortunate.
Stay safe friends! Ask questions, go get tests run, stand up for your health, and read all of the paperwork the doctors give you! No one cares more about you than you (and Jesus!). I pray your 2021 is absolutely amazing!