Happy 83 Frank!

Today is Frank's 83rd birthday!  We had him over last night for a birthday dinner! Here he is after blowing out his candle on his lemon birthday cake!

 Mitch, our cousin/nephew came too, he is dang cute...look at that face.  It seems I have a lot of these pictures of Frank and the kids. Frank looks the same, but the kids change a ton!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY FRANK!

WE LOVE YOU!

Josie's Pandora's Box

I heard Josie crying in her room, a real sad painful cry.

I ran to help her and saw the Q-tip.

She was holding her right ear and said, "It hurts so bad!"

I asked her why it hurt and she said something was in it.

What? 

She walked me downstairs to the bag of sunflower seeds on the counter.

I quickly deduced that she had put a seed in her ear and then trying to get it out herself with a Q-tip, she had pushed it in further, making it quite painful.

I laid her down in my bathroom with a spotlight and some really long skinny tweezers.  I pushed back her hair and pulled on her ear to see into the canal, and there it was, a sunflower seed (without the shell) wedged tight and deep.  I was able to see clearly enough to put the tweezers around the seed, but it was very painful for Josie and it was hard for her to stay still.  The one good grab I had ended up just scraping off part of the seed. 

I needed help.

A quick call to our pediatrician was made and luckily they advised me to come there.  So much better than the instacare or the ER.

Josie was bawling, so nervous and in so much pain!

He looked in and thought that it was just wax and not a seed at all.  So he got his special loop thingy and went to work while I wrestled the strongest little 4 year old body ever!

After a minute or so and tons of screaming, he pulled out the seed. 

Hallelujah!

Then he peeked in her ear just to make sure everything was ok.

He said, it looks really inflamed, more than it should be.  Let me clean out this wax so I can see better.

Josie had HAD it, no more! 

We had to bring in Nurse Vicki to hold her head.

I was using all of my energy to hold her still and she still moved like crazy.

He finally got out the wax.....

Oh wait, it's not wax either, it's waded up tissue! 

What?

So he wanted to take another look to make sure the ear drum was ok.....

"Um, take a look at this, there is something blue in there!"

What?

Sure enough a blue bead (or part of one anyway), but Josie wasn't having any of this!

We convinced her to try and flush it out with a water pik.

It was a mess, it hurt and she hated it, but at lease she sat still.

I took the little ear tool and peaked in....their it was, a blue bead.

Amazing Dr. Wynn came back in and with some motivational therapy, Josie laid back down and he went to work.

I was a sweaty mess, Josie was going hoarse from screaming so long and loud, but he got it!  

Who knew that a little sunflower seed would be the opening of Josie's "pandora's box."

 

The Dr. threw away the tissue wad before I could slide it into my purse, but it was about the same size as the seed, and was yellow from being in there so long.  Who knew all of that could fit into a little ear canal! CRAZY!

A pretty hard little lesson to learn, but it was definitely learned!

Made my day!

After a big Pinegar family get together...feeling a bit beat, Hans was out of town and it was at our place....

I went downstairs to tuck Rockwell in....

I love that boy!

It hurts when I push here....so don't push there!

So Gray came home on Friday afternoon and said, 

"Mom, it hurts when I push here."

I replied, "So don't push there."

He said it was kind of like a stomach ache, kind of like gas...so his friend gave him ex-lax.

Nice.

We gave him gas x and aleve. Then we googled it.

Kidney stones

Appendicitis

a Tumor

Bladder infection

He ate dinner, then had some friends come over.  At about 9:30, he had had it.  We knew it was serious if he was wanting to go to the ER when he had friends over. So Hans took him to Orem Community on the advice of a Dr. friend, and I told all his friends that Gray had gone to the ER. Awkward. After Chloe got home, I headed over to the hospital.

Orem Community turned out great. He was the only patient and got right in for a cat scan. And definitely appendicitis! They were a little bit concerned because it looked like there was fluid surrounding the appendix and they weren't sure if this was infection or what.  But they don't do emergency surgery's like that so they transferred him to UVRMC.  This is what took forever.  There weren't any beds on the pediatric floor....finally they were convinced by his size that he could be on the normal surgical floor.

So he kept his sweet robe on and He and Hans spent the night at Utah Valley. I went home to be with the other kids.

 We joked he looked like a homeless man.

The IV was making his hand really red and swollen.

At 5:30 they woke him up and told him to shower before his surgery.

I rushed down to the hospital just in time to meet the surgeon and to ask some questions.  This is when I started to get nervous.  The Dr. said there could be a chance that the appendix had already burst and that was the fluid on the cat scan, but he wasn't worried because Gray didn't have any symptoms indicating that.  But, if it did rupture, he would have to be in the hospital for 2 weeks on some serious IV antibiotics. And if it didn't rupture, he could maybe go home the same day.

They wheeled him down to surgery and gave him this sweet hat.

When he was going under...they said he was laughing...he liked it.

Great News:
It didn't rupture!
There was puss on the outside of the appendix, so the doctor had him stay another day in the hospital with a few rounds of IV antibiotics.

When he woke up, he had 3 little incisions that were glued together, the 3rd is a little lower than Gray wanted to show.  

He threw up after the anesthesia, then it was all up hill from there.

We are so grateful that an unpleasant situation was as smooth and easy as this.